The Devil in the Flesh (9 page)

So I never complained about the landlord’s hostility, which made being at Marthe’s house so awkward for me.

My so-called obsession with possessing Marthe in a way that Jacques had never been able to, of kissing a tiny place on her body after having made her promise that no other lips but mine would ever touch it, was nothing but
lasciviousness. Did I admit this to myself? Every love has its youth, its maturity, its old age. Had I already reached the final stage, where love no longer satisfied me unless accompanied by certain refinements? For if my sensual pleasure depended on habit, it was whetted by the multitude of mere nothings, those minor adjustments that are imposed on habit. Is it not first of all by increasing the dose, which soon becomes lethal, that an addict achieves rapture, but also in the rhythm that he devises, whether by varying the times or making use of trickery to throw his body off the scent.

I was so fond of the left bank of the Marne that I started going for walks along the other side, which was very different, so I could gaze at the one I loved. The right bank isn’t as soft, and is used by market gardeners, farmers, while mine is for idlers. We would tie the boat to a tree and lie in the middle of a cornfield. The crop would quiver in the evening breeze. In its hiding place our selfishness ignored the damage it was doing, sacrificed the corn to our love’s well-being in the same way we were sacrificing Jacques.

A VAGUE SCENT OF IMPERMANENCE STIRRED my senses. The fact of having savoured more savage pleasures, akin to the loveless ones that come with our first experience of a woman, dulled the effect of the others.

I had already learnt to value nights spent in chastity and freedom, the comfortable feeling of being alone in a bed with cool fresh sheets. I used discretion as an excuse for not sleeping at Marthe’s house now. She was impressed by my strength of character. But I also dreaded that irritation provoked by a particular angelic note in womens’ voices when they wake up, and who, being born actresses, seem to appear from another world with each new morning.

I reproached myself for being critical, for my dissimulations, spent whole days wondering if I loved Marthe more or less than before. My love made everything more complex. Just as I misinterpreted the things that Marthe said, thinking I was giving them deeper meaning, I analysed her silences. Perhaps I’d always been mistaken; a certain impact, which can’t be described, tells us we’ve hit the nail on the head. My joys, my fears were more intense. Lying beside her, a desire to be alone in my own bed at home would unexpectedy seize hold of me, make me see how unbearable life together would be. Yet I couldn’t
imagine living without Marthe. I was beginning to undergo the punishment for adultery.

I resented Marthe for having agreed to furnish Jacques’s house according to my taste before our affair had begun. I could no longer stand the sight of this furniture that I had chosen, not to please myself but to displease Jacques. There was no excuse, I was just weary of it. I was sorry I hadn’t let Marthe choose it herself. I would have probably disliked it at first, but how enchanting to then grow used to it out of love for her. I was envious that this pleasure would now go to Jacques.

Marthe looked at me with her big innocent eyes when I said bitterly: “I hope when we live together we’re not going to keep this furniture.” She respected everything I said. Thinking I’d forgotten that the furniture was my idea, she didn’t dare remind me. But inwardly she deplored my bad memory.

AT THE BEGINNING OF JUNE MARTHE GOT A letter from Jacques, which at long last wasn’t just about how much he loved her. He was ill. They were evacuating him to the hospital at Bourges. I wasn’t glad to hear he was ill, but relieved that he had something to say. He would be passing through J … the next day or the day after, and begged Marthe to come and look out for his train from the platform. Marthe showed me the letter. She was waiting for my instructions.

Love had made a slave of her. Faced with such servile preliminaries, it was hard for me to allow or forbid anything. As far as I was concerned, my silence meant that I agreed. Could I prevent her from catching a glimpse of her husband for a second or two? She didn’t say anything either. So out of a form of tacit consent I didn’t go to see her the next day.

The morning of the day after that, a messenger boy brought a note to my house, which he would only give to me personally. It was from Marthe. She was waiting for me by the river. She begged me to come if I still had any love for her.

I rushed straight down to the bench where Marthe was waiting. Her hello, so out of keeping with the style of her
message, made my blood run cold. I thought her feelings had changed.

Yet Marthe had simply interpreted my silence of two days before as anger. That it was a tacit agreement had never once occurred to her. To her hours of anxiety was added the grievance of now seeing me alive, because the only reason for not going to see her the day before must have been that I was dead. I couldn’t hide my astonishment. I explained that it was discretion, respect for her obligations to her sick husband. She half believed me. I was annoyed. I almost said: “For once I’m not lying …” We both cried.

But muddled games of chess like this can drag on endlessly, exhaustingly, if one of the players doesn’t set things straight. All things considered, Marthe’s attitude towards Jacques wasn’t very becoming. I kissed her, soothed her: “Silence isn’t good for us,” I said. We promised to never conceal our innermost thoughts from each other, although I had to do some pleading to persuade her that such a thing was possible.

Jacques had looked out for Marthe at J … and, when the train went past their house, he had seen the open shutters. His letter begged for reassurance. He asked her to come to Bourges. “You’ll have to go,” I told her, in such a way that these simple words didn’t sound like a rebuke.

“I’ll go,” she replied, “if you come with me.”

This was taking thoughtlessness too far. Yet the love that these words, this appalling behaviour expressed soon turned my anger to gratitude. I got on my high horse. I calmed down. I spoke to her gently, touched by her artlessness. I treated her like a child who cries for the moon.

I pointed out how immoral it would be for me to go
with her. The fact that I didn’t fly into a rage like an offended lover gave my response more weight. It was the first time she had heard me use the word ‘moral’. It came at just the right moment, for, not being malicious, she certainly must have been having serious doubts about the morality of our affair, as I was. Without this one word she might have thought me amoral, because despite rebelling against all those fine bourgeois prejudices she was still very much the bourgeoise. But quite the reverse, however; since this was the first time I had warned her, it proved that up till then I felt we hadn’t done anything wrong.

Marthe took exception to this journey, a distasteful form of honeymoon. She saw now just how impossible it was.

“At least allow me not to go,” she said.

The word ‘moral’, used so rashly, established me as her spiritual adviser. I used it like a tyrant, intoxicated by his newly acquired power. Power only mainfests itself when used unjustly. So I replied that I saw no crime in her not going to Bourges. I came up with reasons that convinced her: the tiring journey, Jacques’s imminent recovery. These reasons excused her, if not in Jacques’s eyes then at least in those of her parents-in-law.

By steering Marthe in a direction that suited me, I gradually shaped her in my own image. This is what I blamed myself for, and for knowingly destroying our happiness. For her to be like me, and for this to be my creation, both delighted and annoyed me. In it I saw a reason for the understanding between us; I also detected the cause of future tragedies. Because it was true that I had gradually passed on my lack of certainty to her, which, come the moment for decisions, prevented her from taking one. Like
me I sensed her hands were weak, and was hoping that the rising tide would spare our house of sand, while other children were busy building theirs further away.

Occasionally an inner likeness extends into the external. Our eyes, our walk—several times strangers took us for brother and sister. This is because the seeds of resemblance lie within us, where love helps them grow. Sooner or later a gesture, an inflection in the voice, gives away even the most discreet of lovers.

It has to be said that if the heart has reasons that reason isn’t familiar with, this is because the latter is less open to reason than our heart. No doubt we are all like Narcissus, we both love and loathe our own image, while being indifferent to any others. This instinct for similarity is what leads us through life, calling out “stop!” in front of a landscape, a woman, a piece of poetry. We are still able to admire others, although without experiencing the same bolt out of the blue. The instinct for similarity is the only type of behaviour that isn’t a pretence. But in everyday society it is only the uncouth who never offend public morality and always go after the same type. Hence some men relentlessly chase ‘blondes’, totally unaware that the deepest resemblances are often the most secret.

FOR SEVERAL DAYS MARTHE HAD SEEMED DISTANT, although not unhappy. Distant and unhappy I could have attributed to anxiousness about the coming fifteenth of July, when she would have to join Jacques’s family, as well as the convalescing Jacques, on a beach by the Channel. It was now her turn to keep quiet, to start at the sound of my voice. She suffered the insufferable—family visits, affronts, sharp insinuations from her mother, good-natured remarks from her father, who assumed she had a lover without really believing it.

Why did she endure it? Was it the result of my lectures, criticising her for setting too great store by material things, for letting herself be upset by the least of them? She seemed happy, yet it was a strange kind of happiness, one which embarrassed her, and which I didn’t like because I didn’t share it. Having thought it childish when Marthe took my silence as a sign of indifference, I now accused her of not loving me because she didn’t say anything.

She didn’t dare tell me that she was pregnant.

I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO SEEM HAPPY AT THE news. But at first I was staggered. Having never imagined that I could be responsible for anything of any kind, I now was, and for the worst thing of all. I was also furious with myself for not being man enough to treat it straightforwardly. Marthe only mentioned it under duress. She was terrified that this moment, which ought to bring us closer, would move us apart. I put on such a convincing show of elation that her fears melted. Deep down her morals were still those of the bourgeoisie, and so for her this child was a sign that God was rewarding our love, not punishing a crime.

While Marthe saw her pregnancy as a reason for me to stay with her for ever, it filled me with dismay. At our age it seemed impossible, unfair, that having a child should hamper our youth. For the first time I gave way to material anxieties: our families would disown us.

Already loving our child, it was out of love that I rejected it. I didn’t want to be responsible for its tragic existence. I myself wouldn’t have been able to survive it.

Instinct is our guide; a guide that leads to ruin. Yesterday, Marthe was afraid that being pregnant would put distance between us. Today, when she had never loved me so much, she thought my love was growing stronger,
like hers. And while yesterday I rejected this child, today I began to love it, took love away from Marthe just as at the start of our relationship my love gave her what it took from others.

Now, touching my lips to Marthe’s stomach, it was no longer her I was kissing, but my child. For sadly Marthe was no longer my mistress; she was a mother.

I stopped behaving as if we were alone now. There was always a witness nearby, to whom we had to account for our actions. I found it difficult to forgive this abrupt change for which I held Marthe alone responsible, yet I sensed that I would have forgiven her even less if she had lied to me. There were moments when I believed that Marthe was lying in order to make our love last longer, and that her son wasn’t mine.

Just as someone who is ill seeks peace and quiet, I didn’t know which way to turn. I had a feeling that it was now a different Marthe I loved, that my son would only be happy if he thought he belonged to Jacques. This duplicity alarmed me, admittedly. I would have to abandon Marthe. On the other hand, however much I regarded myself as a man, the situation was too serious for me to be so conceited as to believe that such an insane existence (or such a
sensible existence
, as I thought) was possible.

FOR JACQUES WOULD EVENTUALLY COME home. After this most unusual period, like so many other soldiers who had been cuckolded as a result of the extraordinary circumstances, he would find an obedient, unhappy wife who showed no outward sign of her loose living. Yet the child could only be attributed to Jacques if she could bear to let him touch her during their holiday. Coward that I was, I begged her to.

Of all our rows, this was neither the least bizarre nor the least painful. Not only that, I was surprised to meet so little resistance. I discovered the reason later. Marthe didn’t dare admit giving herself to Jacques during his last leave, and, quite contrarily, on the pretext of obeying me, was intending to turn him down at Granville using her present condition as an excuse. The entire edifice was a convolution of dates whose spurious coincidences would leave no one in any doubt once the child was born. “Bah!” I thought. “We’ve still got plenty of time. Marthe’s parents will be afraid of a scandal. They’ll take her off to the country and then delay making the announcement.”

The day of Marthe’s departure was approaching. Her absence could only be of benefit to me. It would be a test. I
was hoping to cure myself of her. If I didn’t succeed, if my love was too callow to free itself, I knew that I could go back to a Marthe who would still be just as faithful.