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Xavière said nothing: ever since the beginning of the rehearsal there had been a look of resentment in her eyes.
Françoise put her hand on Elisabeth’s shoulder.
‘Come and smoke a cigarette,’ she said.
‘I’d love to. It’s tyrannical not to allow people to smoke. I’ll have to speak to Pierre about it,’ said Elisabeth with mock indignation.
Françoise stopped in the doorway. A few days earlier, the room had been repainted a light yellow which gave it a welcome rustic look. A faint smell of turpentine still hung in the air.
‘I hope we never leave this old theatre,’ said Françoise, as they climbed the stairs.
‘I wonder if there’s anything left to drink,’ she said, pushing open the door of her office. She opened a cupboard half-filled with books and looked at the bottles lined up on the top shelf. ‘There’s a little whisky here. Would you like that?’
‘Splendid,’ said Elisabeth.
Françoise handed her a glass. There was such warmth in her heart that she felt a burst of affection for Elisabeth. She had the same feeling of comradeship and ease as when, in the past, they had come out of a difficult and interesting class and strolled arm in arm in the lycée yard.
Elisabeth lit a cigarette and crossed her legs.
‘What was the matter with Tedesco? Guimiot insists that he is taking drugs. Do you think that’s true?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Françoise, and she blissfully swallowed a long pull of whisky.
‘That little Xavière is not at all pretty,’ said Elisabeth. ‘What are you doing about her? Was everything put right with her family?’
‘I know nothing about that,’ said Françoise. ‘Her uncle may show up any one of these days and kick up a row.’
‘Do be careful,’ said Elisabeth, with an air of importance. ‘You may run into trouble.’
‘Careful of what?’ said Françoise.
‘Have you found her any work?’
‘No. She’s got to get used to things first.’
‘What’s her particular bent?’
‘I don’t think she’ll ever be capable of much work.’
Elisabeth thoughtfully exhaled a puff of smoke.
‘What does Pierre say about it?’
‘They haven’t seen much of each other. He rather likes her.’
This cross-examination was beginning to irritate her. It almost seemed as if Elisabeth were arraigning her. She cut her short.
‘Tell me, is there any news about you?’ she said.
Elisabeth gave a short laugh.
‘Guimiot? During the rehearsal last Tuesday, he came over to talk to me. Don’t you think he’s handsome?’
‘Very handsome. That’s just why we took him on. I don’t know him at all. Is he nice?’
‘He certainly knows how to make love,’ said Elisabeth in a detached tone.
‘You didn’t lose much time,’ said Françoise a little taken aback. Whenever Elisabeth took a liking to a man she began to talk about sleeping with him. But actually, she had remained faithful to Claude for the last two years.
‘You know my principles,’ said Elisabeth gaily. ‘I’m not the sort of woman who is taken. I’m a woman who does the taking. That very first evening, I asked him to spend the night with me. He was flabbergasted.’
‘Does Claude know?’ said Françoise.
Elisabeth very deliberately tapped the ash from her cigarette. Whenever she was embarrassed her movements and her voice became hard and resolute.
‘Not yet, I’m waiting for just the right moment.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s all very complicated.’
‘Your relations with Claude? It’s a long time since you’ve spoken to me about him.’
‘Nothing’s changed.’ said Elisabeth. The corners of her mouth drooped. ‘Only I have changed.’
‘Did you get nowhere when you had it out with him a month ago?’
‘He keeps on telling me the same old thing: that it’s me who has the better part of the bargain. I’m fed up with that old story. I almost said to him: “It’s much too good for me, thank you; I would be satisfied with the other.”’
‘You must have been too conciliatory again,’ said Françoise.
‘Yes, I think so,’ Elisabeth gazed fixedly into space; an unpleasant thought was passing through her mind. ‘He thinks he can make me swallow anything,’ she said. ‘He’ll get a big surprise.’
Françoise studied her with some interest. At this moment she was not consciously striking an attitude.
‘Do you want to break off with him?’ said Françoise.
Something relaxed in Elisabeth’s face. She became matter of fact.
‘Claude is far too attractive a person for me ever to let him go out of my life,’ she said. ‘But I would like to be less in love with him.’
She wrinkled the corners of her eyes and smiled at Françoise with a hint of mutual understanding, which passed between them only very rarely.
‘We’ve poked enough fun at women who let themselves be victimized. And say what you like, it’s not in my line to be a victim.’
Françoise returned her smile. She would have liked to advise her, but it was a difficult thing to do. What was necessary, was for Elisabeth not to be in love with Claude.
‘Putting an end to it in your own mind only won’t get you very far,’ she said. ‘I wonder if you shouldn’t compel him outright to make a choice.’
‘This isn’t the moment,’ said Elisabeth sharply. ‘No, I think that when I’ve won back my inner independence, I’ll have made great progress. But to do that, it’s essential for me to succeed in dissociating the man from the lover in Claude.’
‘Will you stop sleeping with him?’
‘I don’t know. But what I do know is that I shall sleep with other men.’ She added with a shade of defiance: ‘Sexual faithfulness is perfectly ridiculous. It leads to pure slavery. I don’t understand how you can tolerate it.’
‘I swear to you that I don’t feel that I’m a slave,’ said Françoise.
Elisabeth could not help confiding in someone; after which she invariably became aggressive.
‘It’s odd,’ said Elisabeth slowly, and as if she had been following a train of thought with surprised sincerity. ’The way you were at twenty, I would never have thought you would be a one-man woman. Especially as Pierre has affaires.’
‘You’ve already told me that, but I am certainly not going to put myself out,’ said Françoise.
‘Nonsense. You’re not going to tell me that it’s never happened to you to feel a desire for a man,’ said Elisabeth. ‘You’re talking like all the people who won’t admit they have prejudices. They pretend they are subject to them as a matter of personal choice. But that’s just so much nonsense.’
‘Pure sensuality does not interest me,’ said Françoise. ‘And besides, does pure sensuality even have a meaning?’
‘Why not? It’s very pleasant,’ said Elisabeth with a sneering little laugh.
Françoise rose.
‘I think we might go down. The sets must have been changed by now.’
‘You know, that young Guimiot is really charming,’ said Elisabeth as she walked out of the room. ‘He deserves more than a small part. He could be a worthwhile recruit for you. I’ll have to speak to Pierre about it.’
‘Do speak to him,’ said Françoise. She gave Elisabeth a quick smile. ‘I’ll see you later.’
The curtain was still down. Someone on the stage was hammering. Heavy footsteps shook the flooring. Françoise walked over to Xavière who was talking to Inès. Inès blushed furiously and got up.
‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ said Françoise.
‘I was just going,’ said Inès. She shook hands with Xavière. ‘When am I going to see you?’
Xavière made a vague gesture.
‘I don’t know. I’ll ring you up.’
‘We might have dinner together tomorrow, between rehearsals.’
Inès remained standing in front of Xavière looking unhappy. Françoise had often wondered how the notion of becoming an actress could have entered that thick Norman skull: she had slaved for four years without making any appreciable progress: out of pity, Pierre had given her one line to speak.
‘Tomorrow …’ said Xavière. ‘I’d rather ring you up.’
‘You’ll come through all right, you know,’ said Françoise encouragingly. ‘When you’re not excited your diction is good.’
Inès smiled faintly and walked away.
‘Will you never ring her up?’ asked Françoise.
‘Never,’ said Xavière irritably. ‘Just because I slept at her place three times, there’s no reason why I should have to see her all my life.’
‘Didn’t Gerbert show you round?’
‘He suggested it,’ said Xavière.
‘It didn’t interest you?’
‘He seemed so embarrassed,’ said Xavière. ‘It was painful.’ She looked at Françoise with unveiled bitterness. ‘I loathe foisting myself on people,’ she said vehemently.
Françoise felt herself in the wrong. She had been tactless in leaving Xavière in Gerbert’s hands, but Xavière’s tone surprised her. Could Gerbert really have been off-hand with Xavière? That certainly wasn’t his way.
‘She takes everything so seriously,’ she thought with annoyance.
She had decided once and for all not to let Xavière’s childish fits of surliness poison her life.
‘How was Portia?’ said Françoise.
‘The big dark girl? Monsieur Labrousse made her repeat the same sentence twenty times. She kept getting it all wrong.’ Xavière’s face glowed with scorn. ‘Is it really possible for anyone as stupid as that to be an actress?’
‘There are all kinds,’ said Françoise.
Xavière was bursting with rage: that was obvious. Without a doubt she felt that Françoise was not giving her sufficient attention. She would get over it. Françoise looked at the curtain impatiently. The change of scenery was taking far too long. At least five minutes would have to be saved.
The curtain went up. Pierre was reclining on Caesar’s couch and Françoise’s heart began to beat faster. She knew Pierre’s every intonation, his every gesture. She anticipated them so exactly that she felt as if they sprang from her own will. And yet, it was outside her, on the stage, that they materialized. It was agonizing. She would feel herself responsible for the slightest failure and she couldn’t raise a finger to prevent it.
‘It’s true that we are really one,’ she thought with a burst of love. Pierre was speaking, his hand was raised, but his gestures, his tones, were as much a part of Françoise’s life as of his. Or rather, there was but one life and at its core but one entity, which could be termed neither he nor I, but we.
Pierre was on the stage, she was in the audience, and yet for both of them it was the same play being performed in the same theatre. Their life was the same. They did not always see it from the same angle, for through their individual desires, moods, or pleasures, each discovered a different aspect. But it was, for all that, the same life. Neither time nor distance could divide them. There were, of course, streets, ideas, faces, that came into existence first for Pierre, and others first for Françoise; but they faithfully pieced together these scattered experiences into a single whole, in which ‘yours’ and ‘mine’ became indistinguishable. Neither one nor the other ever withheld the slightest fragment. That would have been the worst, the only possible betrayal.
‘Tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock, we’ll rehearse the third act without costumes,’ said Pierre. ‘And tomorrow morning we’ll go through the whole thing, in sequence and in costume.’
‘I’m going to beat it,’ said Gerbert. ‘Will you need me tomorrow morning?’
Françoise hesitated. With Gerbert the worst drudgery became almost fun; the morning without him would be arid, but his pathetic tired face was heart-breaking to behold.
‘No, there isn’t much left to do,’ she said.
‘Is that really true?’ said Gerbert.
‘Absolutely true. You can go and sleep like a log.’
Elisabeth walked up to Pierre.
‘You know, this Julius Caesar of yours is really extraordinary,’ she said. Her face had an intent expression. ‘It’s so different and at the same time so realistic. The silence at that moment when you raise your hand – the quality of that silence – it’s magnificent.’
‘That’s sweet of you,’ said Pierre.
‘I assure you it will be a success,’ she said emphatically. She looked Xavière up and down with amusement.
‘This young lady doesn’t seem to care very much for the theatre. So blasée already?’
‘I had no idea the theatre was like this,’ said Xavière in a disdainful tone.
