The Devil in the Flesh (10 page)

She left on the twelfth of July at seven in the morning. The night before I stayed at J.… On the way there I resolved not to sleep a wink all night. I would cover Marthe with enough kisses to last me for the rest of my life.

A quarter-of-an-hour after getting into bed, I fell asleep.

As a rule, the fact of Marthe being in the bed kept me awake. Yet for the first time I slept as well with her beside me as if I had been alone.

When I woke, she was already up. She hadn’t dared wake me. There was only half-an-hour before her train went. I was furious with myself for letting sleep steal our last hours together. She was in tears too, because she had to go. I would have preferred to put our last moments to better use than wallowing in each other’s tears.

She gave me her key and asked me to come here, to think of us, to sit at her desk and write to her.

I had vowed not to go all the way into Paris with her. But I couldn’t overcome my desire for her lips and, as I was craven enough to want to love her less, I put my desire down to the fact that she was leaving, to this ‘last time’ that was such a pretence, for I was well aware that there would be no last time unless it was what she wanted.

At the Gare Montparnasse, where she was to meet her parents-in-law, I kissed her unrestrainedly. I was still counting on her in-laws appearing, which would provoke a conclusive scene.

When I got back to F …, being used to not living except in the expectation of seeing Marthe, I did my best to keep myself amused. I dug the garden, tried to read, played hide-and-seek with my sisters, something I hadn’t done for five years. In the evening, so as not to arouse suspicions, I had to go out for a walk. Until I got to the Marne, I usually found the path easy-going. But on this particular evening I dawdled, stumbled on stones, which made my heart race. Lying stretched out in the boat, for the first time I wanted to die. But since I was no more capable of dying than I was of living, I pinned my hopes on the generosity of some passing murderer. I was only sorry that it wasn’t possible to die of world-weariness, or grief. Gradually my mind emptied, like a bath draining. One final gurgle, longer this time, and it was empty. I fell asleep.

I was woken by a chill July dawn. Frozen to the bone, I went home. The whole household was already up and about. My father greeted me stonily in the hall. My mother had been taken slightly ill—they had sent the chambermaid to wake me so I could go and fetch the doctor. So my absence was now official.

I endured the furore, filled with admiration for the inborn subtlety of a good judge who, from among a thousand and one blameworthy elements, selects the only innocent one so as to allow the culprit to vindicate himself. I didn’t do so however, it was too difficult. I let my father think I had just come back from J … and, when he forbade me to go out after dinner, I was inwardly grateful to him for still colluding with me, and for giving me an excuse to stop roaming the streets on my own.

I waited for the postman. It was what I lived for. Even the slightest effort to forget was beyond me.

Marthe had given me a paper knife, and insisted I use it to open her letters. Yet was I able to? I was in too much of a hurry. I tore the envelopes. Each time, ashamed, I resolved to put the letter aside for fifteen minutes, untouched. By this I hoped to regain my self-control, keep the letters in my pocket unopened. But I always put off this procedure until the next day.

One day, losing patience with my feebleness, in a fit of rage I tore up a letter without reading it. No sooner were the pieces of paper strewn across the garden than I was down on all fours. With the letter was a photograph of Marthe. I, such a superstitious person, who invested the slightest little event with dramatic meaning, had torn up her face. In it I saw a warning from above. Not till I had spent four hours sticking the letter and the picture together again were my agonies soothed. I had never exerted myself so much over anything. The fear that something awful might happen to Marthe kept me going during this ludicrous occupation, which clouded my eyes and my nerves.

A specialist had advised Marthe to go bathing in the sea. While reproaching myself for being malicious, I ordered her not to, not wanting anyone but me to see her body.

But since Marthe had to spend a month at Granville in any case, I was glad that Jacques would be there. I remembered the black-and-white photograph of him that Marthe had shown me on the day we chose the furniture. Nothing frightened me more than young men on the beach. Even then I thought they would be stronger, more handsome, more stylish than me.

Her husband would protect her from them.

In affectionate moments, like a drunk who embraces
everyone, I would dream of writing to Jacques, confessing that I was Marthe’s lover and, authorised by this status, commending her to him. Occasionally I envied Marthe, she who was worshipped by both Jacques and me. Shouldn’t the pair of us try and make her happy? During these fits I thought I was being the obliging lover. I would have liked to meet Jacques, explain things to him, why we shouldn’t be jealous of each other. But then my hatred would suddenly set me back on my course.

IN EVERY LETTER MARTHE ASKED ME TO GO TO her apartment. This importuning reminded me of a pious aunt of mine who berated me for never visiting my grandmother’s grave. It’s not in my nature to make pilgrimages. Such tiresome duties just circumscribe death, and love.

Aren’t we able think about a dead person, or our mistress, except in a cemetery or a particular room? I didn’t attempt to point this out to Marthe, but simply told her that I went to her house—just as I told my aunt that I had been to the cemetery. Nonetheless I did have to go to Marthe’s house, although in most unusual circumstances.

One day on the train I met the Swedish girl whose guardians wouldn’t allow her to see Marthe. In my solitude I found this young person’s childishness appealing. I suggested that she secretly come and have tea in J … the next day. I didn’t tell her that Marthe was away in case this scared her off, and even said how pleased Marthe would be to see her again. I swear I had no idea just what I was intending to do exactly. I was behaving like children who, when they first meet, try to amaze each other. I couldn’t resist seeing the look of surprise or anger on Svea’s angelic face when I told her that Marthe was away.

Yes, it was probably the infantile pleasure of astonishing someone, because I couldn’t find anything unusual to say
to her, whereas she had the advantage of her foreignness, and surprised me with everything she said. There’s nothing more delightful than sudden intimacy between people who don’t understand each other. Around her neck she wore a small gold-and-blue-enamelled cross over a rather ugly dress, which in my mind’s eye I saw quite differently. A true living doll. I felt a growing desire to continue our tête-à-tête somewhere other than in a railway carriage.

What slightly spoilt her convent-girl manner was that she behaved like a pupil at the École Pigier, where she went for an hour every day to learn to speak French and use a typewriter, without deriving much benefit from it. She showed me her typewriting homework. There was a mistake with every letter, corrected in the margin by the teacher. From a hideous handbag, which she had clearly made herself, she removed a cigarette case on which there was a countess’s coronet. She offered me a cigarette. She didn’t smoke, but always carried the case because her friends smoked. She told me about Swedish traditions, which I pretended to be familiar with: St John’s Night, bilberry jam. Then she took out a photograph of her twin sister, which had arrived from Sweden the day before—she was stark naked on a horse and wearing their grandfather’s top hat. I blushed scarlet. Her sister looked so much like her that I thought she was having a joke at my expense by showing me a picture of herself. I bit my lips to subdue their desire to kiss this mischievous innocent. I must have had a savage expression on my face, because she seemed frightened, and looked round for the communication cord.

The next day she came to Marthe’s house at four o’clock. I explained that Marthe was in Paris but would be back shortly. Then I added: “She told me not to let you go until she arrives.” I wasn’t planning to tell her what my ploy was until later.

Luckily she was fond of her food. But my own gluttony took on a hitherto unknown form. It wasn’t tart or raspberry ice cream I hungered for, but to be the tart and ice cream that she was about to put in her mouth. Inadvertently I pulled a face.

It wasn’t lechery that made me lust after Svea, it was gluttony. If I couldn’t have her lips, then her cheeks would be enough.

I spoke clearly and precisely so she would understand me properly. Stimulated by this amusing doll’s tea party, I, who never usually said much, was now annoyed at not being able to speak fast enough. I felt a need for chatter, childish confidences. I put my ear close to her mouth. I drank in her young words.

I forced her to have a liqueur. But then I felt sorry for her, like a bird that you are trying to get drunk.

I hoped her tipsiness would serve my purposes, because it mattered little to me whether she offered me her lips willingly or not. I reflected on how improper it was for this little scene to be taking place in Marthe’s apartment, although I kept telling myself that ultimately I wasn’t depriving our love of anything. I wanted Svea like a piece of fruit, which couldn’t possibly make any mistress jealous.

I held her hands in both of mine, they seemed clumsy, puppy-like. I would have liked to undress her, cradle her. She lay on the couch. I got up, leant over the still-downy place where her hair began and noticed also the soft hairs
that grew above her lips. I didn’t assume from her silence that she was enjoying my kisses; just that, being unable to get angry, she couldn’t think of the words to turn me down politely in French. I nibbled her cheeks, expecting sweet juice to come spurting out, as if they were a peach.

Finally I kissed her lips. An uncomplaining victim, she bore with my caresses, closed her eyes and mouth. Her only gesture of rebuff was to move her head slightly from side to side. I didn’t mistake this for a response, but my lips deluded themselves into believing it was. I stayed there, close to her in a way that I had never been with Marthe. Her act of resistance, which in fact wasn’t one, gratified my impertinence, my laziness. I was naïve enough to imagine that things would continue in the same vein, and that raping her was going to be easy.

I had never undressed a woman before; I had usually been undressed by them. So I set about it awkwardly, starting by taking off her shoes and stockings. I kissed her feet and her legs. But when I went to unfasten her blouse, Svea struggled like a little devil who doesn’t want to go to bed and has to be undressed forcibly. She lashed out with her feet. I grabbed them in mid-air, held onto them, kissed them. But then finally I had had my fill, just as gluttony wanes after too much cream and delicacies. I now had to tell her about my hoax, that Marthe was away on holiday. I made her promise that if she bumped into Marthe she wouldn’t tell her about our meeting. I didn’t say that I was Marthe’s lover, but I let it be understood. When I had sat down next to her again, and asked politely whether we might see each other again at some point, in her delight at the secrecy she answered: “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I never went back to Marthe’s apartment. And perhaps
Svea never rang the bell at the locked door. I was aware how culpable my behaviour was for the moral climate of the time. It was probably the circumstances that had made Svea seem so special. Would I have found her desirable anywhere else apart from in Marthe’s room?

Yet I felt no regrets. It wasn’t thinking about Marthe that made me abandon the young Swedish girl, it was because I had had all the sweetness out of her.

A few days later I got a letter from Marthe. With it was one from her landlord, telling her that his house wasn’t a lovers’ meeting place, and about the use I was making of having access to her apartment, where I had taken a woman. So I have evidence of you being unfaithful, said Marthe. She wasn’t going to see me again. No doubt she would suffer, but she preferred that to being made a fool of.

I was familiar with empty threats, all it would take to quash them was a lie, even the truth, if necessary. But I was offended that in a letter breaking off our relationship, Marthe hadn’t mentioned suicide. I accused her of being cold-hearted. I considered her letter undeserving of any explanations. Because in a similar situation, rather than contemplating killing myself, I would have felt it more fitting to threaten Marthe. It was an ineradicable sign of my age and schooling—I thought that certain lies are dictated by the laws of passion.

A new task arose as part of my amorous initiation—to justify myself to Marthe, accuse her of trusting me less than she did her landlord. I pointed out that it was just a stratagem on the Marins’ part. Svea had come to see her one day when I was writing in her apartment, and if I
invited her in it was because, seeing the girl from the window, and knowing she had been forbidden to see Marthe, I didn’t want her to think that Marthe held her personally responsible for this unpleasant estrangement. She had probably come in secret, at the cost of countless problems for herself.

Hence I was able to tell Marthe that Svea was just as fond of her as ever. I finished by saying how much of a consolation it had been to be able to talk about Marthe in her own home with her closest friend.

This scare caused me to curse a love that compels us to explain our actions, when I would have preferred not to have to explain anything, to myself or anyone else.

And yet love must afford many advantages, I reflected, because men put their freedom in its hands. I was in a hurry to be strong enough to dispense with love, and thus not have to give up any of my desires. I didn’t realize that on the scale of subjugation, it is far better to be a slave to your heart than to your senses.

Just as a bee gathers nectar and enriches the hive, a lover enriches his love with every desire that seizes hold of him in the street. He lets his mistress have the benefit of them. I had still to discover that self-restraint which makes the unfaithful faithful. If a man were to lust after a girl and transfer this fervour to the woman he loves, his desire—all the more intense because unsatisfied—will make this woman believe that she has never been loved so much. She is being deceived, but in the eyes of society her honour is intact. From conclusions such as this comes promiscuity.
So we shouldn’t be too hasty to condemn men who, in a sudden access of passion, are capable of cheating on their mistress; we shouldn’t accuse them of being superficial. They find their duplicity distasteful, and wouldn’t dream of confusing happiness with pleasure.