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‘How could anyone quarrel with Inès?’ said Pierre. ‘She’s like a sheep.’
‘Oh, don’t be too sure of that,’ said Xavière.
‘Really?’ said Pierre. His eyes wrinkled gaily. He was curiosity itself. ‘With that big, innocent face do you mean to tell me she’s liable to bite you? What has she done to you?’
‘She hasn’t done anything,’ said Xavière reticently.
‘Oh, please tell me,’ said Pierre in his most coaxing voice. ‘I’d be delighted to know what’s hidden in the depths of those still waters.’
‘Oh nothing. Inès is a dunce,’ said Xavière. ‘The point is, I don’t like anyone to feel they hold any proprietary rights over me.’ She smiled and Françoise’s uneasiness crystallized. When alone with Françoise, Xavière, despite herself, permitted loathing, pleasure, affection, to be visible on a defenceless face, a child’s face. Now she felt herself a woman in front of a man and her features displayed precisely the shade of confidence or reserve she wanted to express.
‘Her affection must be an encumbrance,’ said Pierre with a look of concurrence and innocence which trapped Xavière.
‘That’s right,’ said Xavière brightening. ‘Once I put off an appointment at the last minute – the evening we went to the Prairie. She pulled a face a yard long …’
Françoise laughed.
‘Yes,’ said Xavière excitedly. ‘I was rude, but she dared to make some uncalled-for remarks,’ she blushed and added, ‘about something that was none of her concern.’
So that was it. Inès must have questioned Xavière about her relations with Françoise, and perhaps, with her calm Norman heavy-handedness, had joked about it. Beneath all Xavière’s vagaries there was without question a whole world of obstinate and secret thoughts. It was a somewhat disquieting idea.
Pierre laughed.
‘I know someone, that young Eloy girl, who always answers when a friend breaks a date: “It so happens that I’m no longer free!” But not everyone has that amount of tact.’
Xavière frowned.
‘In any case, not Inès,’ she said. She must have been vaguely aware of the sarcasm, because her face had frozen.
‘It’s very complicated, you know,’ said Pierre seriously. ‘I can readily understand that you find it distasteful to follow the rules, but it’s also impossible to live only for the moment.’
‘Why?’ said Xavière. ‘Why do people always have to drag so much dead weight about with them?’
‘Look,’ said Pierre, ‘time isn’t made up of a heap of little separate bits into which you can shut yourself up in turn. When you think you’re living purely in the present, you’re involving your future whether you like it or not.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Xavière. Her tone was not friendly.
‘I’ll try to explain,’ said Pierre. When he became interested in a person, he was capable of carrying on a discussion for hours with angelic sincerity and patience. It was one form of his generosity. Françoise rarely took the trouble to explain what she thought.
‘Let’s assume you’ve decided to go to a concert,’ said Pierre. ‘Just as you’re about to set out, the idea of walking or taking the métro there strikes you as unbearable. So you convince yourself that you are free as regards your previous decision, and you stay at home. That’s all very well, but when ten minutes later you find yourself sitting in an arm-chair, bored stiff, you are no longer in the least free. You’re simply suffering the consequences of your own act.’
Xavière laughed dryly.
‘Concerts! That’s another of your beautiful inventions. As if anyone could want to hear music at fixed hours! – It’s utterly ridiculous.’ She added in a tone of almost bitter hatred: ‘Has Françoise told you that I was supposed to go to a concert this afternoon?’
‘No, but I do know that as a rule you can never bring yourself to leave your room. It’s a shame to live like a hermit in Paris.’
‘Well, this evening isn’t going to make me want to change my mind,’ she said scornfully.
Pierre’s face darkened.
‘You’ll miss scores of precious opportunities if you carry on like that,’ he said.
‘Always being afraid of losing something! To me there’s nothing more sordid. If it’s lost, it’s lost, that’s all there is to it!’
‘Is your life really a series of heroic renunciations?’ said Pierre with a sarcastic smile.
‘Do you mean I’m a coward? If you knew how little I care!’ said Xavière smugly, with a slight curl of her upper lip.
There was a silence. Pierre and Xavière both assumed poker-faces.
‘I think we’d better go home to bed,’ said Françoise.
What was most aggravating was that she herself could not overlook Xavière’s ill humour as easily as during the rehearsal. Xavière had suddenly begun to count, though no one understood exactly why.
‘Do you see that woman facing us?’ said Françoise. ‘Listen to her a moment. She’s been telling her boy-friend all the particular secrets of her soul for quite a long time.’
She was a young woman with heavy eyelids. She was staring, as if hypnotized, at her companion. ‘I’ve never been able to follow the rules of flirting,’ she was saying. ‘I can’t bear being touched; it’s morbid.’
In another corner, a young woman with green and blue feathers in her hair was looking uncertainly at a man’s huge hand that had just pounced on hers.
‘This is a great meeting-place for young couples,’ said Pierre.
Once more a long silence ensued. Xavière had raised her arm to her lips and was gently blowing the fine down on her skin. Françoise felt she ought to think of something to say, but everything sounded false even as she was putting it into words.
‘Have I ever told you anything about Gerbert?’ said Françoise to Xavière.
‘A little,’ said Xavière. ‘You’ve told me he’s very nice.’
‘He had a queer childhood,’ said Françoise. ‘He comes from a completely poverty-stricken working-class family. His mother went mad when he was a baby, his father was out of work, and the boy earned a few sous a day selling newspapers. One fine day a pal of his took him along to a film-studio to look for a job as an extra, and it happened that both were taken on. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old at the time. He was very likeable and he attracted attention. He was given minor parts and, later on, more important ones. He began to make good money, which his father squandered royally.’ Françoise gazed apathetically at a tremendous white cake, decorated with fruit and arabesques of icing, which reposed upon a nearby tray; just looking at it was enough to make anyone feel sick. No one was listening to her story.
‘People began to take an interest in him. Péclard more or less adopted him; he’s still living with him. He’s had as many as six adoptive fathers at one time. They dragged him out to cafés and night clubs; the women used to stroke his head. Pierre was one of these fathers; he helped him with his work and his reading.’ She smiled and her smile was lost in space. Pierre, huddled into himself, was smoking his pipe. Xavière looked barely polite. Françoise felt ridiculous, but she kept talking with stubborn animation.
‘That boy had a very funny education. He was an expert on surrealism without ever having read a line of Racine. It was touching, because to fill in the gaps he used to go to the public libraries to pore over atlases and books on mathematics like a real little self-educator, but he kept it all a secret. And then he had a very hard time of it. He was growing up; people could no longer find amusement in him as if he were a little performing monkey. About the same time as he lost his job in the movies, his adoptive fathers dropped him, one after the other. Péclard dressed and fed him when he thought of it, but that was all. It was then that Pierre took him in hand and persuaded him to take up the theatre. Now he’s made a good start. He still lacks experience, but he’s talented and has a great stage-sense. He’ll get somewhere.’
‘How old is he?’ asked Xavière.
‘He looks sixteen, but he’s twenty.’
Pierre smiled faintly.
‘I must say, you do know how to spin out a conversation,’ he said.
‘I’m very glad you’ve told me his story,’ said Xavière eagerly. ‘It’s extremely amusing to picture that little boy and all those self-important men who condescendingly kicked him around, and so felt strong and generous, and patronizing.’
‘You can easily see me doing that, can’t you?’ said Pierre, pulling a wry face.
‘You? Why? No more than the others,’ said Xavière, in all innocence. She looked at Françoise with marked affection. ‘I always thoroughly enjoy your way of telling stories.’
She was offering Françoise a transference of her allegiance. The woman with the green and blue feathers was saying in a flat voice: ‘… I only rushed through it, but for a small town it’s very picturesque.’ She had decided to leave her bare arm on the table and as it lay there, forgotten, ignored, the man’s hand was stroking a piece of flesh that no longer belonged to anyone.
‘It’s extraordinary, the impression it makes on you to touch your eyelashes,’ said Xavière. ‘You touch yourself without touching yourself. It’s as if you touched yourself from some way away.’
She spoke to herself and no one answered her.
‘Have you noticed how pretty those green and gilt latticed windows are?’ said Françoise.
‘In the dining-room at Lubersac,’ said Xavière, ‘there were leaded windows, too. But they weren’t as wishy-washy as these, they had beautiful rich colours. When I looked out at the park through the yellow panes, there might have been a thunderstorm over the landscape; through the green and blue it appeared like paradise, with trees of precious stones and lawns of brocade; and when through the red, I thought I was in the bowels of the earth.’
Pierre made a perceptible effort to be amiable. ‘Which did you prefer?’ he asked.
‘The yellow, of course,’ said Xavière. She stared into space, as if in suspense. ‘It’s terrible the way one loses things as one grows older.’
‘But you can’t remember everything?’ he said.
‘Why not? I never forget anything,’ said Xavière scornfully. ‘For instance, I remember very clearly how beautiful colours used to transport me in the past; now …’ she said with a disillusioned smile, ‘I only find them pleasing.’
‘Yes, of course! That always happens when you grow older,’ said Pierre in a kind voice. ‘But there are other things to be gained. Now you understand books and pictures and plays which would have been meaningless to you in your childhood.’
‘But I don’t give a damn about understanding just with my mind,’ said Xavière with unexpected violence and with a kind of sneer. ‘I’m not an intellectual.’
‘Why do you have to be so disagreeable?’ said Pierre abruptly.
Xavière stared, wide-eyed.
‘I’m not being disagreeable.’
‘You know very well that you are. You hate me on the slightest pretext. Though I think I can guess why.’
‘What do you think?’ asked Xavière.
Her cheeks were flushed with anger. Her face was extremely attractive, with such subtly variable shadings that it seemed not to be composed of flesh, but rather of ecstasy, of bitterness, of sorrow, to which the eye became magically sensitive. Yet, despite this ethereal transparency, the outlines of her nose and mouth were extremely sensual.
‘You thought I wanted to criticize your way of life,’ said Pierre, ‘that’s not so. I was arguing with you as I would argue with Françoise, or with myself. And for the simple reason that your point of view interested me.’
‘Of course you chose the most malicious interpretation at once,’ said Xavière. ‘I’m not a sensitive child. If you think I’m weak and capricious and I don’t know what else, you can surely tell me.’
‘Not at all, I’m very envious of your capacity to feel things so strongly,’ said Pierre. ‘I understand your putting a higher value on that than on anything else.’
If he had taken it into his head to win his way back into Xavière’s good graces, this was only the beginning.
‘Yes,’ said Xavière with a certain gloom; her eyes flashed. ‘I’m horrified that you should think that of me. It’s not true. I don’t get annoyed like a child.’
‘Still, don’t you see,’ said Pierre in a conciliatory tone, ‘you put an end to the conversation, and from that moment on you were no longer in the least friendly.’
‘I wasn’t aware of it,’ said Xavière.
Try to remember; you’re sure to become aware of it,’
Xavière hesitated.
‘It wasn’t for the reason you thought’
‘What was the reason?’
Xavière made a brusque gesture.
‘No, it’s stupid, it’s of no importance. What good does it do always to hark back to the past? It’s over and done with now.’
Pierre sat up and faced Xavière squarely, he would spend the whole night here rather than give in. To Françoise, such persistence sometimes seemed tactless, but Pierre was not afraid of being tactless. He had consideration for other people’s feelings only in small things. What exactly did he want of Xavière? polite rencontres on the hotel staircase? an affaire? love? friendship?
‘It’s of no importance if we expect never to see each other again,’ said Pierre. ‘But that would be a pity: don’t you think we could establish pleasant relations?’ He had infused a kind of wheedling timidity into his voice. He had such absolute control over his face and his slightest inflections, that it was a little disconcerting.
Xavière gave him a wary and yet almost affectionate look.
‘Yes, I think so,’ she said.
‘Then let’s get this straight,’ said Pierre. ‘What did you hold against me?’ His smile already held an implication of secret understanding.
Xavière was playing with a strand of hair. Watching the slow and steady movement of her fingers, she said:
‘It suddenly occurred to me that you were trying to be nice to me because of Françoise, and I disliked that.’ She flung back the golden strand. ‘I have never asked anyone to be nice to me.’
‘Why did you think that?’ said Pierre. He was chewing the stem of his pipe.
‘I don’t know,’ said Xavière.
‘You thought that I’d been too hasty in putting myself on terms of intimacy with you? And that made you angry with me and with yourself? Isn’t that so? Therefore, out of some sort of surliness, you decided that my cordiality was only a pretence.’
Xavière said nothing.
‘Was that it?’ asked Pierre with a twinkle.
‘Yes, in a way,’ said Xavière with a flattered and embarrassed smile. Again she took hold of a few hairs and began to run her fingers up and down them, squinting at them with a stupid expression. Had she given it so much thought? Certainly Françoise, out of laziness, had over-simplified Xavière; she even wondered, a little uneasily, how she could possibly have treated Xavière like an insignificant little girl for the last few weeks; but wasn’t Pierre deriving some pleasure out of making her complicated? In any case, they did not both view her in the same light. Slight as it was, this variance was apparent to Françoise.
‘If I hadn’t wanted to see you, it would have been very simple to go straight back to the hotel,’ said Pierre.
‘You might have wanted to see me out of curiosity,’ said Xavière. ‘That would be natural; you and Françoise have a way of pooling everything.’
A whole world of secret resentment was discernible in this short off-hand sentence.
‘You thought we had mutually agreed to lecture you?’ said Pierre. ‘But that had nothing to do with the case.’
‘You were like two grown-ups giving a child a good talking-to,’ said Xavière, who seemed now to be sulking only on principle.
‘But I didn’t say anything,’ said Françoise.
Xavière assumed a knowing look. Pierre stared at her, smiling earnestly.
