Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (8 page)

For the time being, I felt I was being protected and guided both in matters of this life and of the life beyond. I was glad, too, that I was not entirely at the mercy of grown-ups; I was not alone in my children's world; I had an equal: my sister, who began to play a considerable role in my life about my sixth birthday.

We called her Poupette; she was two and a half years younger than me. People said she took after Papa. She was fair-haired, and in the photographs taken during our childhood her blue eyes always appear to be filled with tears. Her birth had been a disappointment, because the whole family had been hoping for a boy; certainly no one ever held it against her for being a girl, but it is perhaps not altogether without significance that her cradle was the centre of regretful comment. Great pains were taken to treat us both with scrupulous fairness; we wore identical clothes, we nearly always went out together; we shared a single existence, though as the elder sister I did in fact enjoy certain advantages. I had my own room, which I shared with Louise, and I slept in a big bed, an imitation antique in carved wood over which hung a reproduction of Murillo's
Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.
A cot was set up for my sister in a narrow corridor. While Papa was undergoing his army training, it was I who accompanied Mama when she went to see him. Relegated to a secondary position, the ‘little one' felt almost superfluous. I had been a new experience for my parents: my sister found it much more difficult to surprise and astonish them; I had never been compared with anyone: she was always being compared with me. At the Cours Désir the ladies in charge made a habit of holding up the older children as examples to the younger ones; whatever Poupette might do, and however well she might do it, the passing of time and the sublimation of a legend all contributed to the idea that I had done everything much better. No amount of effort and success was sufficient to break through that impenetrable barrier. The victim of some obscure malediction, she was hurt and perplexed by her situation, and often in the evening she would sit crying on her little chair. She was accused of having a sulky disposition; one more inferiority she had to put up with. She might have taken a thorough dislike to me, but paradoxically she only felt sure of herself when she was with me. Comfortably settled in my part of elder sister, I plumed myself only on the superiority accorded to my greater age; I thought Poupette was remarkably bright for her years; I accepted her for what she was – someone like myself, only a little younger; she was grateful for my approval, and responded to it with an absolute devotion. She was my liegeman, my
alter ego,
my double; we could not do without one another.

I was sorry for children who had no brother or sister; solitary
amusements seemed insipid to me; no better than a means of killing time. But when there were two, hopscotch or a ball game were adventurous undertakings, and bowling hoops an exciting competition. Even when I was just doing transfers or daubing a catalogue with water-colours I felt the need of an associate. Collaborating and vying with one another, we each found a purpose in our work that saved it from all gratuitousness. The games I was fondest of were those in which I assumed another character; and in these I had to have an accomplice. We hadn't many toys; our parents used to lock away the nicest ones – the leaping tiger and the elephant that could stand on his hind legs; they would occasionally bring them out to show to admiring guests. I didn't mind. I was flattered to possess objects which could amuse grown-ups; and I loved them because they were precious: familiarity would have bred contempt. In any case the rest of our playthings – grocer's shop, kitchen utensils, nurse's outfit – gave very little encouragement to the imagination. A partner was absolutely essential to me if I was to bring my imaginary stories to life.

A great number of the anecdotes and situations which we dramatized were, we realized, rather banal; the presence of the grown-ups did not disturb us when we were selling hats or defying the Boche's artillery fire. But other scenarios, the ones we liked best, required to be performed in secret. They were, on the surface, perfectly innocent, but, in sublimating the adventure of our childhood, or anticipating the future, they drew upon something secret and intimate within us which would not bear the searching light of adult gazes. I shall speak later of those games which, from my point of view, were the most significant. In fact, I was always the one who expressed myself through them; I imposed them upon my sister, assigning her the minor roles which she accepted with complete docility. At that evening hour when the stillness, the dark weight, and the tedium of our middle-class domesticity began to invade the hall, I would unleash my fantasms; we would make them materialize with great gestures and copious speeches, and sometimes, spellbound by our play, we succeeded in taking off from the earth and leaving it far behind until an imperious voice suddenly brought us back to reality. Next day we would start all over again. ‘We'll play
you know what,'
we would whisper to each other as we prepared for bed. The day would come when a certain theme, worked over too long, would no longer have the power to inspire
us; then we would choose another, to which we would remain faithful for a few hours or even for weeks.

I owe a great debt to my sister for helping me to externalize many of my dreams in play: she also helped me to save my daily life from silence; through her I got into the habit of wanting to communicate with people. When she was not there I hovered between two extremes: words were either insignificant noises which I made with my mouth, or, whenever I addressed my parents, they became deeds of the utmost gravity; but when Poupette and I talked together, words had a meaning yet did not weigh too heavily upon us. I never knew with her the pleasure of sharing or exchanging things, because we always held everything in common; but as we recounted to one another the day's incidents and emotions, they took on added interest and importance. There was nothing wrong in what we told one another; nevertheless, because of the importance we both attached to our conversations, they created a bond between us which isolated us from the grown-ups; when we were together, we had our own secret garden.

We found this arrangement very useful. The traditions of our family compelled us to take part in a large number of duty visits, especially around the New Year; we had to attend interminable family dinners with aunts and first cousins removed to the hundredth degree, and pay visits to decrepit old ladies. We often found release from boredom by running into the hall and playing at ‘you know what'. In summer, Papa was very keen on organizing expeditions to the woods at Chaville or Meudon; the only means we had of enlivening the boredom of these long walks was our private chatter; we would make plans and recall all the things that had happened to us in the past; Poupette would ask me questions; I would relate episodes from French or Roman history, or stories which I made up myself.

What I appreciated most in our relationship was that I had a real hold over her. The grown-ups had me at their mercy. If I demanded praise from them, it was still up to them to decide whether to praise me or not. Certain aspects of my behaviour seemed to have an immediate effect upon my mother, an effect which had not the slightest connexion with what I had intended. But between my sister and myself things happened naturally. We would disagree, she would cry, I would become cross, and we would hurl the supreme insult at one another: ‘You
fool
!' and then
we'd make it up. Her tears were real, and if she laughed at one of my jokes, I knew she wasn't trying to humour me. She alone endowed me with authority; adults sometimes gave in to me: she obeyed me.

One of the most durable bonds that bound us together was that which exists between master and pupil. I loved studying so much that I found teaching enthralling. Playing at school with my dolls did not satisfy me at all: I didn't just want to go through the motions of teaching: I really wanted to pass on the knowledge I had acquired.

Teaching my sister to read, write, and count gave me, from the age of six onwards, a sense of pride in my own efficiency. I liked scrawling phrases or pictures over sheets of paper: but in doing so I was only creating imitation objects. When I started to change ignorance into knowledge, when I started to impress truths upon a virgin mind, I felt I was at last creating something real. I was not just imitating grown-ups: I was on their level, and my success had nothing to do with their good pleasure. It satisfied in me an aspiration that was more than mere vanity. Until then, I had contented myself with responding dutifully to the care that was lavished upon me: but now, for the first time, I, too, was being of service to someone. I was breaking away from the passivity of childhood and entering the great human circle in which everyone is useful to everyone else. Since I had started working seriously time no longer fled away, but left its mark on me: by sharing my knowledge with another, I was fixing time on another's memory, and so making it doubly secure.

*

Thanks to my sister I was asserting my right to personal freedom; she was my accomplice, my subject, my creature. It is plain that I only thought of her as being ‘the same, but different', which is one way of claiming one's pre-eminence. Without ever formulating it in so many words, I assumed that my parents accepted this hierarchy, and that I was their favourite. My room gave on to the corridor where my sister slept and at the end of which was my father's study; from my bed I could hear my father talking to my mother in the evenings, and this peaceful murmur often lulled me
to sleep. But one evening my heart almost stopped beating; in a calm voice which held barely a trace of curiosity, Mama asked: ‘Which of the two do you like best?' I waited for Papa to say my name, but he hesitated for a moment which seemed to me like an eternity: ‘Simone is more serious-minded, but Poupette is so affectionate. . . .' They went on weighing the pros and the cons of our case, speaking their inmost thoughts quite freely; finally they agreed that they loved us both equally well: it was just like what you read in books about wise parents whose love is the same for all their children. Nevertheless I felt a certain resentment. I could not have borne it if one of them had preferred my sister to myself; if I was resigned to enjoying an equal share of their affection, it was because I felt that it was to my advantage to do so. But I was older, wiser, and more experienced than my sister: if my parents felt an equal affection for us both, then at least I was entitled to more consideration from them; they ought to feel how much closer I was to their maturity than my sister.

I thought it was a remarkable coincidence that heaven should have given me just these parents, this sister, this life. Without any doubt, I had every reason to be pleased with what fate had brought me. Besides, I was endowed with what is known as a happy disposition; I have always found reality more rewarding than the mirages of the imagination; now the things whose existence was most real to me were the things I owned myself: the value I attached to them protected me from all disappointments, nostalgias, and regrets; my affection for them overcame all baser longings. Blondine, my doll, was old-fashioned, dilapidated, and badly dressed; but I wouldn't have exchanged her for the most gorgeous doll queening it in a smart shop window: the love I had for her made her unique and irreplaceable. I wouldn't have changed the park at Meyrignac for any earthly paradise, or our apartment for any palace. The idea that Louise, my sister, and my parents might be any different from what they were never entered my head. And as for myself, I couldn't imagine myself with any other face, or with any other body: I felt quite satisfied with the way I was.

It is not a very big step from contentment to complacency. Highly satisfied with the position I occupied in the world, I regarded it as a specially privileged one. My parents were exceptional human beings, and I considered our home to be exemplary in every way. Papa liked making fun of people, and Mama had a shrewd
critical bent; few were the persons who found favour in their eyes, but I never heard anyone run
them
down: hence their way of life could be taken to represent the absolute norm of behaviour. Their superiority was reflected on myself. In the Luxembourg Gardens, we were forbidden to play with strange little girls: this was obviously because we were made of finer stuff. Unlike the vulgar race of boys and girls, we did not have the right to drink from the metal goblets that were chained to the public fountains; grandmama had made me a present of an opalescent shell, a mother-of-pearl chalice from which I alone might drink: like my horizon blue greatcoat, it was an exclusive model. I remember a Mardi-Gras at which our bags were filled, not with common confetti, but with rose petals. My mother bought her cakes only from specially designated pastrycooks: the éclairs made by the family baker might as well have been constructed of plaster, so inedible did we consider them: the delicacy of our stomachs, too, distinguished us from baser mortals. While the majority of the children in my circle took a popular children's magazine called
La Semaine de Suzette,
I was presented with a subscription to
L'Étoile Noëliste,
which Mama considered to be of a higher moral tone. I did not go to a state school, but attended a private establishment which manifested its originality in many ways; the classes, for example, were numbered in a curious way: zero, first, second, first-third, third-second, first-fourth, and so on. I studied my catechism in the school's private chapel, without having to mix with a whole herd of other children from the parish. I belonged to an élite.

However, in this very select circle, certain of my parents' friends enjoyed one great advantage over us: they were rich; as a mere corporal, my father earned about five cents a day, and we were obliged to practise a genteel economy. We were often invited, my sister and I, to children's parties on a staggeringly lavish scale: in vast suites of rooms draped with satins and velvets and dripping with chandeliers a host of children would gorge themselves on ices, cakes, and
marrons glacés
; there would be Punch and Judy shows and performances by ventriloquists and conjurers, and we would all dance round a huge, gift-laden Christmas tree. The other little girls would be arrayed in gorgeous silks and laces; but we wore woollen frocks the colour of mould or mud. I used to feel a little uncomfortable in such surroundings; at the end of the day, exhausted, sticky, and feeling decidedly ill, I would be nauseated
by the rich carpets, the crystal chandeliers, the silks and taffetas; I was always glad when I got back home. My entire upbringing continually re-affirmed that virtue and culture were more desirable than material wealth, and my own tastes encouraged me to believe it; I therefore accepted with equanimity our more modest state. True to my calculated optimism, I even convinced myself that our condition was an enviable one; I saw in our mediocrity the golden mean. I considered the poor and the people of the streets as rank outsiders; but princes and millionaires, too, were outside the real world: their peculiar situation excluded them from normal society. As for myself, I believed I had access to the very highest, as well as to the very lowest ranks of the social scale; actually the former were closed to me, and I was radically cut off from the latter.