The Woman Destroyed

‘Is she well? She’s not bored?’

‘she will be delighted to see us; but as for bring bored, she doesn’t know the meaning of the word.’

She had been a school-teacher with three children, and, for her, retirement is a delight that she has not yet come to the end of. We talked about her and about the Chinese, of whom we, like everybody else, know so very little. André opened a magazine. And there I was, looking at my watch, whose hands did not seem to be going round.

All at once he was there: every time it surprises me to see his face, with the dissimilar features of my mother and André blending smoothly in it. He hugged me very tight, saying cheerful things, and I leant there with the softness of his flannel jacket against my cheek. I released myself so as to kiss Irène: she smiled at me with so frosty a smile that I was astonished to feel a soft, warm cheek beneath my lips. Irène. I always forget her; and she is always there. Blonde; grey-blue eyes; weak mouth; sharp chin; and something both vague and obstinate about her too-wide forehead. Quickly I wiped her out. I was alone with Philippe as I used to be in the days when I woke him up every morning with a touch on his forehead.

‘Not even a drop of whisky?’ asked André.

‘No, thanks. I’ll have some fruit-juice.’

How sensible she is! She dresses with a sensible stylishness; sensibly stylish hair-do—smooth, with a fringe hiding her big forehead. Artless make-up: severe little suit. When I happen to run through a woman’s magazine I often say to myself, ‘Why, here’s Irène!’ It often happens too that when I see her I scarcely recognize her. ‘She’s pretty,’ asserts André. There are days when I agree—a delicacy of ear and nostril: a pearly softness of skin emphasized by the dark blue of her lashes. But if she moves her head a little her face slips, and all you see is that mouth, that chin. Iréne. Why? Why has Philippe always gone for women of that kind—smooth, stand-offish, pretentious? To prove to himself that he could attract them, no doubt. He was not fond of them. I used to think that if he fell in love … I used to think he would not fall in love; and one evening he said to me, ‘I have great news for you,’ with the somewhat over-excited air of a birthday-child who has been playing too much, laughing too much, shouting too much. There was that crash like a gong in my bosom, the blood mounting to my cheeks, all my strength concentrated on stopping the trembling of my lips. A winter evening, with the curtains drawn and the lamplight on the rainbow of cushions, and this suddenly-opened gulf, this chasm of absence. ‘You will like her: she is a woman who has a job.’ At long intervals she works as a script-girl. I know these with-it young married women. They have some vague kind of a job, they claim to use their minds, to go in for sport, dress well, run their houses faultlessly, bring up their children perfectly, carry on a social life—in short, succeed on every level. And they don’t really care deeply about anything at all. They make my blood run cold.

Philippe and Irène had left for Sardinia the day the university closed, at the beginning of June. While we were having dinner at that table where I had so often obliged Philippe to eat (come, finish up your soup: take a little more beef: get something down before going off for your lecture), we talked about their journey—a handsome wedding-present from Irène’s parents, who can afford that sort of thing. She was silent most of the time, like an intelligent woman who knows how to wait for the right moment to produce an acute and rather surprising remark: from time to time she did drop a little observation, surprising—or at least surprising to me—by its stupidity or its utter ordinariness.

We went back to the library. Philippe glanced at my desk. ‘Did the work go well?’

‘Pretty well. You didn’t have time to read my proofs?’

‘No; can you imagine it? I’m very sorry.’

‘You’ll read the book. I have a copy for you.’ His carelessness saddened me a little, but I showed nothing. I said, ‘And what about you? Are you going to get back to serious work on your thesis again now?’ He did not answer. He exchanged an odd kind of look with Irène. ‘What’s the matter? Are you going to set off on your travels again?’

‘No.’ Silence again and then he said rather crossly, ‘Oh, you’ll be vexed; you’ll blame me; but during this month I have come to a decision. It is altogether too much, teaching and working on a thesis at the same time. But unless I do a thesis there is no worthwhile future for me in the university. I am going to leave.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘I’m going to leave the university. I’m still young enough to take up something else.’

‘But it’s just not possible. Now that you have got this far you cannot drop it all,’ I said indignantly.

‘Listen. Once upon a time being a don was a splendid career. These days I am not the only one who finds it impossible to look after my students and do any work of my own: there are too many of them.’

That’s quite true,’ said Andrè. ‘Thirty students is one student multiplied by thirty. Fifty is a mob. But surely we can find some way that will give you more time to yourself and let you finish your thesis.’

‘No,’ said Irène, decisively. ‘Teaching and research—they really are too badly paid. I have a cousin who is a chemist. At the National Research Centre he was earning eight hundred francs a month. He has gone into a dye factory—he’s pulling down three thousand.’

‘It’s not only a question of money,’ said Philippe.

‘Of course not. Being in the swim counts too.’

In little guarded, restrained phrases she let us see what she thought of us. Oh, she did it tactfully—with the tact you can hear rumbling half a mile away. ‘Above all I don’t want to hurt you—don’t hold it against me, for that would be unfair—but still there are some things I have to say to you and if I were not holding myself in I’d say a great deal more.’ Andrè is a great scientist of course and for a woman I haven’t done badly at all. But we live cut off from the world, in laboratories and libraries. The new generation of intellectuals wants to be in immediate contact with society. With his vitality and drive, Philippe is not made for our kind of life; there are other careers in which he would show his abilities far better. ‘And then of course a thesis is totally old hat,’ she ended.

Why does she sometimes utter grotesque monstrosities? Irène is not really as stupid as all that. She does exist, she does amount to something: she has wiped out the victory I won with Philippe—a victory over him and for him. A long battle and sometimes so hard for me. ‘I can’t manage this essay; I have a head-ache. Give me a note saying I’m ill.’ ‘No.’ The soft adolescent face grows tense and old; the green eyes stab me. ‘How unkind you are.’ Andrè stepping in—‘Just this once…’ ‘No.’ My misery in Holland during those Easter holidays when we left Philippe in Paris. ‘I don’t want your degree to be botched.’ And with his voice full of hatred he shouted, ‘Don’t take me, then; I don’t care. And I shan’t write a single line.’ And then his successes and our understanding, our alliance. The understanding that Iréne is now destroying. I did not want to break out in front of her: I took hold of myself. ‘What do you mean to do, then?’

Irène was about to answer. Philippe interrupted her. ‘Irène’s father has various things in mind.’

‘What kind of things? In business?’

‘It’s still uncertain.’

‘You talked it over with him before your journey. Why did you say nothing to us?’

‘I wanted to turn it over in my mind.’

A sudden jet of anger filled me: it was unbelievable that he should not have spoken to me the moment the idea of leaving the university stirred in his mind.

‘Of course you two blame me,’ said Philippe angrily. The green of his eyes took on that stormy colour I knew so well.

‘No,’ said Andrè. ‘One must follow one’s own line.’

‘And you, do you blame me?’

‘Making money does not seem to me a very elevating ambition,’ I said. ‘I am surprised.’

‘I told you it is not a question of money.’

‘What is it a question of, then? Be specific.’

‘I can’t. I have to see my father-in-law again. But I shan’t accept his offer unless I think it worth while.’

I argued a little longer, as mildly as possible, trying to persuade him of the value of his thesis and reminding him of earlier plans for papers and research. He answered politely, but my words had no hold on him. No, he did not belong to me any more; not any more at all. Even his physical appearance had changed: another kind of haircut; more up-to-date clothes—the clothes of the fashionable sixteenth arrondissement. It was I who moulded his life. Now I am watching it from outside, a remote spectator. It is the fate common to all mothers; but who has ever found comfort in saying that hers is the common fate?

André saw them to the lift and I collapsed on to the divan. That void again … The happy day, the true presence underlying absence—it had merely been the certainty of having Philippe here, for a few hours. I had waited for him as though he were coming back never to go away again: he will always go away again. And the break between us is far more final than I had imagined. I shall no longer share in his work; we shall no longer have the same interests. Does money really mean all that to him? Or is he only giving way to Irène? Does he love her as much as that? One would have to know about their nights together. No doubt she can satisfy his body to the full, as well as his pride: beneath her fashionable exterior I can see that she might be capable of remarkable outbursts. The: bond that physical happiness brings into being between a man and woman is something whose importance I tend to underestimate. As far as I am concerned sexuality no longer exists. I used to call this indifference serenity: all at once I have come to see it in another light—it is a mutilation; it is the loss of the sense. The lack of it makes me blind to the needs, the pains and the joys of those who do possess it. It seems to me that I no longer know anything at all about Philippe. Only one thing is certain—the degree to which I am going to miss him. It was perhaps thanks to him that I adapted myself to my age, more or less. He carried me along with his youth. He used to take me to the twenty-four hour race at Le Mans, to op-art shows and even, once, to a happening. His mercurial, inventive presence filled the house. Shall I grow used to this silence, this prudent, well-behaved flow of days that is never again to be broken by anything unforeseen?

I said to André, ‘Why didn’t you help me try to bring Philippe to his senses? You gave way at once. Between us we might perhaps have persuaded him.’

‘People have to be left free. He never terribly wanted to teach.’

‘But he was interested in his thesis.’

‘Up to a point, a very vaguely defined point. I understand him.’

‘You understand everybody.’

Once André was as uncompromising for others as he was for himself. Nowadays his political attitudes have not weakened but in private life he keeps his rigour for himself alone: he excuses people, he explains them, he accepts them. To such a pitch that sometimes it maddens me. I went on, ‘Do you think that making money is an adequate goal in life?’

‘I really scarcely know what our goals were, nor whether they were adequate.’

Did he really believe what he was saying, or was he amusing himself by teasing me? He does that sometimes, when he thinks me too set in my convictions and my principles. Usually I put up with it very well—I join in the game. But this time I was in no mood for trifling. My voice rose. ‘Why have we led the kind of life we have led if you think other ways of life just as good?’

‘Because we could not have done otherwise.’

‘We could not have done otherwise because it was our way of life that seemed to us valid.’

‘No. As far as I was concerned knowing, discovering, was a mania, a passion, even a kind of neurosis, without the slightest moral justification. I never thought everybody else should do the same.’

Deep down I do think that everybody else should do the same, but I did not choose to argue the point. I said, ‘It is not a question of everybody, but of Philippe. He is going to turn into a fellow concerned with dubious money-making deals. That was not what I brought him up for.’

André reflected. ‘It is difficult for a young man to have over-successful parents. He would think it presumptuous to suppose that he could follow in their steps and rival them. He prefers to put his money on another horse.’

‘Philippe was making a very good start.’

‘You helped him: he was working under your shadow. Frankly, without you he would not have got vary far and he is clear-sighted enough to realize it.’

There had always been this underlying disagreement between us about Philippe. Maybe André was chagrined because he chose letters and not science: or maybe it was the classic father-son rivalry at work. He always looked upon Philippe as a mediocre being, and that was one way of guiding him towards mediocrity.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘You have never had any confidence in him. And if he has no confidence in himself it is because he sees himself through your eyes.’

‘Maybe,’ said André, in a conciliatory tone.

‘In any case, the person who is really responsible is Irène. It is she who is pushing him on. She wants her husband to earn a lot of money. And she’s only too happy to draw him away from me.’

‘Oh, don’t play the mother-in-law! She’s quite as good as the next girl.’

‘What next girl? She said monstrous things.’

‘She does that sometimes. But sometimes she is quite sharp. The monstrosities are a mark of emotional unbalance rather than a lack of intelligence. And then again, if she had wanted money more than anything else she would never have married Philippe, who is not rich.’

‘She saw that he could become rich.’

‘At all events she picked him rather than just any pretentious little nobody.’

‘If you like her, so much the better for you.’

‘When you love someone, you must give the people he loves credit for being of some value.’

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But I do find Irène disheartening.’

‘You have to consider the background she comes from.’

‘She scarcely comes from it at all, unfortunately. She is still there.’

Those fat, influential, important bourgeois, stinking with money, seem to me even more loathsome than the fashionable, shallow world I revolted against as a girl.

We remained silent for a while. Outside the window the neon advertisement flicked from red to green: the great wall’s eyes blazed. A lovely night. I would have gone out with Philippe for a last drink on the terrace of a café … No point in asking André whether he would like to come for a stroll; he was obviously half asleep already. I said, ‘I wonder why Philippe married her.’

‘Oh, from outside, you know, there is never any understanding these things.’ He answered in an offhand tone. His face had collapsed: he was pressing a finger into his cheek at the level of his gum—a nervous habit he caught some time ago.

‘Have you got tooth-ache?’

‘No.’

‘Then why are you messing about with your gum?’

‘I’m making sure it doesn’t hurt.’

Last year he used to take his pulse every ten minutes. It is true his blood-pressure was a little high, but treatment steadied it at a hundred and seventy, which is perfect for our age. He kept his fingers pressed against his cheek; his eyes were vacant; he was playing at being an old man and he would end by persuading me that he was one. For a horrified moment I thought, ‘Philippe has gone and I am to spend the rest of my life with an old man!’ I felt like shouting, ‘Stop, I can’t bear it.’ As though he had heard me, he smiled, became himself again, and we went to bed.

He is still asleep. I shall go and wake him up: we will drink piping hot, very strong China tea. But this morning is not like yesterday. I must learn that I have lost Philippe—learn it all over again. I ought to have known it. He left me the moment he told me about his marriage: he left me at the moment of his birth—a nurse could have taken my place. What had I imagined? Because he was very demanding I believed I was indispensable. Because he is easily influenced I imagined I had created him in my own image. This year, when I saw him with Irène or his in-laws, so unlike the person he is with me, I thought he was falling in with a game: I was the one who knew the real Philippe. And he has preferred to go away from me, to break our secret alliance, to throw away the life I had built for him with such pains. He will turn into a stranger. Come! André often accuses me of blind optimism: maybe this time I am harrowing myself over nothing. After all, I do not really think that there is no salvation outside the world of the university, nor that writing a thesis is a categorical imperative. Philippe said he would only take a worthwhile job … But I have no confidence in the jobs Irène’s father can offer him. I have no confidence in Philippe. He has often hidden things from me, or lied: I know his faults and I am resigned to them—and indeed they move me as a physical ugliness might do. But this time I am indignant because he did not tell me about his plans as they were forming. Indignant and worried. Up until now, whenever he hurt me he always knew how to make it up to me afterwards: I am not so sure that this time he can manage it.

Why was André late? I had worked for four hours without a pause; my head was heavy and I lay down on the divan. Three days, and Philippe had not given any signs of life: that was not his way, and I was all the more surprised by his silence since whenever he is afraid he has hurt me he keeps ringing up and sending little notes. I could not understand; my heart was heavy and my sadness spread and spread, darkening the world; and the world gave it back food to feed upon. André. He was growing more and more morose. Vatrin was the only friend he would still see and yet he was cross when I asked him to lunch. ‘He bores me.’ Everyone bores him. And what about me? A great while ago now he said to me, ‘So long as I have you I can never be unhappy.’ And he does not look happy. He no longer loves me as he did. What does love mean to him, these days? He clings to me as he might cling to anything he had been used to for a long while but I no longer bring him any kind of happiness. Perhaps it is unfair, but I resent it: he accepts this indifference—he has settled down into it.

The key turned in the lock; he kissed me; he looked preoccupied. ‘I’m late.’

‘Yes, rather.’

‘Philippe came to fetch me at the Ecole Normale. We had a drink together.’

‘Why didn’t you bring him here?’

‘He wanted to speak to me alone. So that I should be the one to tell you what he has to say.’ (Was he leaving for abroad, a great way off, for years and years?) ‘You won’t like it. He could not bring himself to tell us the other evening but it is all settled. His father-in-law has found him a job. He is getting him into the Ministry of Culture. He tells me that for anyone of his age it is a splendid post. But you see what it implies.’

‘It’s impossible! Philippe?’

It was impossible. He shared our ideas. He had taken great risks during the Algerian war—that war which had torn our hearts and which now seems never to have taken place at all—he had got himself beaten up in anti-Gaullist demonstrations; he had voted as we did during the last elections …

‘He says he has developed. He has come to understand that the French left wing’s negativism has led it nowhere, that it is done for, finished, and he wants to be in the swim, to have a grip on the world, accomplish something, construct, build.’

‘Anyone would think it was Irène speaking.’

‘Yet it was Philippe,’ said André in a hard voice.

Suddenly everything fell into place. Anger took hold of me. ‘So that’s it? He’s an arriviste—a creature that’s going to succeed whatever it costs? He’s turning his coat out of vulgar ambition. I hope you told him what you thought of him.’

‘I told him I was against it.’

‘You didn’t try to make him change his mind?’

‘Of course I did. I argued.’

‘Argued! You ought to have frightened him—told him that we should never see him again. You were too soft: I know you.’ All at once it crashed over me, an avalanche of suspicions and uneasy feelings that I had thrust back. Why had he never had anything but pretentious, fashionable, too-well-dressed young women? Why Irène and that great frothy marriage in church? Why did he display such an eager desire to please his in-laws—why so winning? He was at home in those surroundings, like a fish in its native water. I had not wanted to ask myself any questions, and if ever André ventured a criticism I stood up for Philippe. All my obstinate trust turned into bitterness of heart. In an instant Philippe showed another face. Unscrupulous ambition: plotting. ‘I’m going to have a word with him.’

I went angrily towards the telephone. André stopped me. ‘Calm down first. A scene will do nobody any good.’

‘It will relieve my mind.’

‘Please.’

‘Leave me alone.’

I dialled Philippe’s number. ‘Your father has just told me you’re joining the Ministry of Culture right up at the top. Congratulations!’

‘Oh, please don’t take it like that,’ he said to me.

‘How am I to take it, then? I ought to be glad you’re so ashamed of yourself that you didn’t dare tell me to my face.’

‘I’m not ashamed at all. One has the right to reconsider one’s opinions.’

‘Reconsider? Only six months ago and you were utterly condemning the régime’s entire cultural policy.’

‘There you are, then! I’m going to try and change it.’

‘Come, come, you aren’t of that calibre and you know it. You’ll play their little game as good as gold and you’ll carve yourself out a charming little career. Your motive is mere ambition, nothing more …’ I don’t know what else I said to him. He shouted, ‘Shut up, shut up.’ I went on: he interrupted, his voice filled with hatred, and in the end he shouted furiously, ‘I’m not a swine just because I won’t share in your senile obstinacy.’

‘That’s enough. I shall never see you again as long as I live.’

I hung up: I sat down, sweating, trembling, my legs too weak to hold me. We had broken off for ever more than once; but this clash was really serious. I should never see him again. His turning his coat sickened me, and his words had hurt me deeply because he had meant than to hurt deeply.

‘He insulted us. He spoke of our senile obstinacy. I shall never see him again and I don’t want you to sec him again either.’

‘You were pretty hard, too. You should never have treated it on an emotional basis.’

‘And just why not? He has not taken our feelings into account at all. He has put his career first, before: us, and he is willing to pay the price of a break …’

‘He had not expected any break. Besides, there won’t be one: I won’t have it.’

‘As far as I’m concerned it’s there already: everything’s over between Philippe and me.’ I closed my mouth: I was still quivering with anger.

‘For some time now Philippe has been very odd and shifty,’ said André. ‘You would not admit it, but I saw clearly enough. Still, I should never have believed he could have reached that point.’

‘He’s just an ambitious little rat.’

‘Yes,’ said André in a puzzled voice. ‘But why?’

‘What do you mean, why?’

‘As we were saying the other evening, we certainly have our share of responsibility.’ He hesitated. ‘It was you who put ambition into his mind; left to himself he was comparatively apathetic. And no doubt I built up an antagonism in him.’

‘It’s all Irène’s fault,’ I burst out. ‘If he had not married her, if he had not got into that environment he would never have ratted.’

‘But he did marry her, and he married her partly because he found people of that environment impressive. For a long time now his values have no longer been ours. I can see a great many reasons …’