Marie (2 page)

She is already far from the water’s edge. She stops, puts the oars at ease and looks around her. How lovely the sea is! It’s as though she can see the colour of the water in the night, and breathe the smell that rises up from it, for the first time in years. At that moment she is alone. And against that mixed background of smells and colours an essential truth re-emerges, with great clarity and precision. Once again she grasps its full significance, in all its weight and seriousness, as if it were a plundered secret.

Now she allows herself to move at the same pace as the water, without any sense of fear. Does it matter where is she going? Perhaps the waves will take her even further out or perhaps they will bring her gently back to the shore.

Suddenly she hears familiar voices.

‘Marie! Where are you?’

‘Hey, Marie! Marie, say something!’

She sits up, steers the boat towards the beach, and finds the rock that is her landmark. She jumps out and swiftly
ties up the ropes. The voices go on calling. Finally she replies, and makes her way towards Jean and the young women.

‘Where were you? Did you leave the road, then?’

‘If we didn’t know how scared you are of the water we’d have thought you’d gone out all on your own, in a boat or a canoe or something! But there was no danger of that, was there?’

‘We were looking for you to take you to the harbour. Come on!’

Smiling, Marie lets herself be led away by all the arms that reach out to her.

A fishing boat had just arrived at the harbour, and everyone rushed towards it, to see the catch as it was unloaded. They joined in, passing full baskets and placing them on one of the seats that surrounded the narrow quay of this rectangular little harbour. They gathered round in a circle, questioning the fisherman and leaning over the fresh fish.

As Jean and the young women moved off Marie was about to follow them. Looking up she suddenly stood stock still; she stopped breathing, as though constricted by too tight an embrace. There he was, standing right in front of her, leaning on the back of the bench with his long adolescent hands. She saw again, through his clothing, the slim tanned shoulders, the long brown legs, the slender hips. Again they exchanged looks. How old was he? Nineteen, twenty? His eyes were solemn; twenty-two perhaps, certainly no older: the light scratch under his eyes was a sign of youth rather than maturity.

Although the fisherman now had only these two silent spectators, he went on with his explanations. Conversation
soon started up again and while the boy was questioning the fisherman, Marie looked at him. And when it was her turn to do the talking, the boy’s gaze rested on her. They did not speak to each other; their words merged with those of the fisherman.

‘Well, all that fish will provide some good meals for tomorrow!’

They laughed together at what the fisherman had just said. Not that his remark was particularly funny – their laughter was more nervous than merry.

LATER
, in the half-darkness of the bedroom, she is lying stretched out, with Jean’s arms around her.

‘Jean, my darling …’

She whispers in a wounded voice, her whole spirit reaching painfully towards a goal that she feels she must achieve. Something heavy and stifling takes shape, expands, rises, bursts. Marie’s desperate sense of sadness dissipates and she lies there, exhausted by happiness – but a happiness that is cerebral rather than physical. Jean, barely startled by the trembling of her body, places her firmly back by his side. ‘Go straight to sleep now, Marie.’

Moving away from her, he turns round and is asleep. Marie wants to die. Do all men turn round and sleep like this, after making love? They probably do …

She slides to the other edge of the bed to find the cold place that is hers. She buries her tear-streaked face in the icy pillow. And she stays that way, her young animal desire still intact.

‘H
ERE, JEAN, TAKE THE SUNTAN OIL
.’

‘What about you – still not going to use it?’

‘No, I get quite brown enough without oil or sunbathing,’ Marie said.

She stretched out a leg to reveal a matt brown skin marked by small scratches from stones and brambles. ‘Are you planning to stay here in the garden? I want to go and take some photos …’ She had already set off, but turned round to say: ‘All the same, Jean, do be careful – you have such delicate skin … Hang on a moment, let me help you with your back.’

As she covered Jean’s back with oil a very soft, tender look came into her eyes. ‘There now, out of danger … you can lie full out in the sun!’ Laughing, Marie wiped her hands on the grass in the flowerbed.

SHE WALKED
for a long time, following the same road – always white, dry, without shade. She went up several paths that led only to fields of olive trees, and then returned to the harbour, looking all round it with searching eyes. She retraced her steps towards the road back, then took a new path, flanked by two low walls, which ended up way down the beach, opposite a tiny island.

Now she can come to a halt, for he is there, several metres from her, sitting on a narrow promontory of rocks.

She trembles a little, then controls herself and walks on. She passes him and stops on the rocks, camera in hand, searching for the island through the lens.

‘If you want to photograph the island, you’d do better to stand back a few paces. The view will be better.’

At the sound of his voice Marie steps back, almost without realising it: her whole life is in the small fragment of flesh that is her wrist, encircled by an unfamiliar hand. Then she is free again: she points the camera, works the shutter.

‘A Zeiss Ikon? It’s the same as mine.’

‘They’re good cameras …’

He has jumped down from the rocks on to the sand and holds out a helping hand. She has already taken off, expecting him to step back a bit to let her land. But he doesn’t move; he catches her, and holds her close for several seconds.

They sit on the sand. They might have gone on talking; about the distant hills that unfold towards the sea, about a white villa the outline of which is visible among the cypresses. But what would have been the point? They know that there
is nothing to say. They mutually accept this great silence, and the richness, the sincerity that lies within it. They also know that in that moment they are seeing everything from the same point of view and that, for both of them, that red sail on the sea stands out as clearly, as harshly, as cruelly, as the thing that is deep inside them.

They went back towards the road; pointing out a path that Marie hadn’t yet taken, he said: ‘That ought to be a short cut.’

‘But can you be sure it leads to the village?’

Shrugging his shoulders he said: ‘Don’t you like taking risks?’

Marie smiled, and walked ahead of him along the path.

She was walking fast, not worrying about her bare feet inside her sandals and the sharp stones in the road. Tense and straight-backed, she went faster and faster, in spite of the heat, even though the road was getting rockier and rockier, and the slope steeper. He followed close behind her and although she managed to stay upright while stumbling on the stones, he held out his arm to help her, holding her gently by the elbow. They didn’t know how long the climb would take, there was very little shade, and they were bathed in sweat. Finally they were gasping uncontrollably, totally exhausted.

‘You’re walking too fast … let’s stop for a moment.’

As though she had not heard what he’d just said, Marie appeared to be ready to continue with this hellish journey. But holding out his arms he took her firmly by the elbow, pushed her to the right side of the road, and made her sit down, in the shade of some olive trees.

MARIE, DREAMILY WATCHING
the branches of a tree criss-crossed against the sky, feels his body against her, almost on top of her, feels his strong hands slipping her clothes from her shoulders and throat, feels him caressing her damp skin.

‘You’re so hot …’

Marie puts up a fight; she struggles; in one movement of her long sinewy thighs, she repulses him. He returns to the charge, backs off, tries again, and occasionally succeeds in coming to rest, motionless, on top of her. She still has too many clothes on.

‘What is it? Are you afraid?’

‘What would I be afraid of?’

‘I don’t know – of nothing.’

In a barely audible voice, anguished as a moan of pain, she says: ‘Of nothing – yes, perhaps this is nothing – let me go …’

She has rejected the tender weight of his body and is now immobile in victory. But what other struggle was coming to an end behind her closed eyelids? No more images … A face passes to and fro over memories of six years: a familiar, adored, rather tense face.

They go back down towards the path, walking slowly, side by side, their beautiful, thwarted desire heavy between them.

He says: ‘When are you leaving here?’

‘In a few days.’

‘And after the holidays, back to Paris?’

‘Yes. What about you?’

‘I’m going back tonight.’

He takes out a packet of cigarettes, offers one to her, takes one himself. He tears off a piece of paper from the packet, writes a word on it and some figures: ‘There, I’m going to leave you now.’

She lets him go, then comes back and leans against the low wall that borders the road. She stays there, completely alone, lost between two shattered worlds, clasping the little scrap of paper in the palm of her feverish hand:
WAGRAM
17–42.

A
LIVING ROOM
, a study, a bedroom, a kitchen. A complete little world of wood, metal, windows and materials lies ready to welcome them back, to weave once more, with every move they make, the gentle fabric of daily life.

Marie breathes in the air of an apartment that has been abandoned for a month. She touches the utensils in the kitchen, wonders at their outlines. The coffee pot and the pans have taken on the metallic odour of things not used for a while.

‘Shall we go to a restaurant, Jean?’

‘Let’s not, surely we’ve had enough of eating out?’

He’s right. As soon as the suitcases are through the door Jean seems pleased to be home and to have to sort out the load of circulars and papers spilling from the letter box. Washing those kitchen things is going to have to be done
some time, Marie thinks, whether it’s today or tomorrow. Should she wait and let the cleaner do it? No, she can’t leave the whole task to a girl who comes in only two mornings a week.

The next day, after Jean had left for the office, Marie emptied the cases and put them away, introducing a degree of order into the space around her.

‘Germaine, it’s not worth taking the linen into the bedroom; my husband prefers to keep it in the bathroom.’

‘Oh yes, that’s right, Madame.’

‘My husband prefers’ … ‘Oh yes, Madame’: a wife, a husband, a household, a Germaine. Habits interrupted, then resumed again: Marie found it oddly, abruptly disturbing. She stopped what she was doing and leaned against the piece of furniture she was dusting. She let her thoughts wander but then, fearing that they would run amok, made her way to the kitchen and began to prepare lunch.

Returning to the living room, she spread a coloured linen cloth on the table and arranged some flowers in a vase, keeping a close eye on every detail. Jean was about to come home. They would lunch together side by side in a mood of tenderness which Marie was already anticipating and which she would watch over so carefully, so attentively. She has been preserving this thing for years, and now …

LIFE RESUMED
its course, slowly, indecisively.

Thursday came round – teaching day. Marie enjoys the work, and it allows her to contribute to the household budget.

As she brings the child into the room, a lazy boy of fifteen who needs special coaching to bring him up to the level of the others, she asks him: ‘Where did we get to?’

‘Verse number 30,’ he replies.

‘All right, carry on from there.’

A still uncertain voice begins to speak; it is rather hoarse as it plunges into deep, masculine tones before abruptly slipping back into the shrill voice of a child. Marie listens to this ‘breaking’ voice:

‘
Arcades
, the Arcadians …
cantare periti
, little songs, are easy to recite.
Oh mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant
…’

She turns the page; she is using the same book that she herself used in class. She notices a pencilled note in the margin, rather faded and written in a clumsy hand. Leaning over the book she deciphers: ‘For me, Nathaniel, the genuineness of my pleasure is the most important of guides.’ Opposite verse 38 – of course! She smiles, recalling herself in a tartan dress, reddish hair tied at the nape of the neck with a black ribbon. She remembers this same Marie in a grey suit, eyes sparkling, leaving an auditorium at the Sorbonne, looking at her wrist-watch and making her way towards the Centrale. She remembers her love for Jean, the passionate crushing of fragile bones. Then she sees a Marie who obliterates herself, who disappears, turns into another Marie whose eyes are closed to the world, who only reveres a universe inhabited by those two lively, expressive eyes, that fair, springy hair, those two broad shoulders, those two strong hands; a Marie who is painfully tense, who builds up, constructs, protects.

‘Mecum inter salices lenta sub vite jaceret …’

The pupil’s voice stops abruptly. Seeing that Marie is far away he looks at the hands, the arms, the shoulders of the young woman, letting his gaze come to rest upon her dress, at the point where her breasts lift the material upwards. Marie intercepts his look and, in a firm voice that is intended to reintroduce a strict working atmosphere, urges her pupil to translate. But since she hasn’t been following the text, all she has in her head are the last words she has heard him say.

‘Come on, translate! What is the subject of the verb “
jaceret
”?’

The adolescent hesitates; he is at a loss.

‘Well? What would have been lying under the flexible vine?’

‘The object of my love,’ replies the schoolboy, blushing.

As men develop, their veils drop one by one, laying their lives bare; they have so many paths to choose from. Marie is moved as she looks at the child. She’d like to hold out her hand to him, to say something like: ‘Don’t trust your heart …’

But the boy’s hoarse voice resumes, by turns deep and shrill:
‘Serta mihi Phyllis legeret …’

When the lesson is over Marie claims some homework from him. ‘That essay your school friends did while you were away – I’d like you to do it for me. Bring it with you next Thursday.’

‘All right,’ the boy says feebly, already seeing his week ruined by the task.

‘What was the subject?’

He reels off a sentence in a tone of disgust that amuses
her. She looks at his shoulders, already a man’s, at his pale face, at his ink-stained fingers, at his clumsy way of standing – still very much a child’s. Again she sees herself, with startling clarity, in her tartan dress.

‘Tell me, is it boring for you to have to write that essay?’

‘Oh yes!’ the child replies openly.

‘And do you find Virgil boring, too?’

‘No, I don’t find Virgil boring.’

‘All right, you needn’t write the essay, I’ll find you another subject. But for the next lesson, I want you to translate the following twenty verses of the tenth Bucolic.’

When the child leaves the apartment Marie half leans over the banisters to watch him go. As happy children do, he skips down the stairs hitting each step in a crazy rhythm, and soon his voice tunes in with his feet in a silly song: ‘Knock, knock, who’s there? MOSCOW! No ess-ay, only some Vir-gil to translate … Wow, that’s a teacher and a half! What a terrific woman! Wom-an, wom-an … Mos-cow what? Mos-n’t let her shake me like a plum tree …’

Marie goes back in, laughing at the top of her voice. She’s laughing at everything: at the peculiar song, at the child’s happiness, at ‘
jaceret
’, at herself.

The moment she’s inside the room she hears the phone ring. She listens, replies, and replaces the receiver, her happiness abruptly shattered: Jean will not be home for dinner tonight. She’ll spend a long, miserable evening sitting huddled in an armchair, feeling tired and anxious, her features drawn, waiting for him to get back. She’ll cry because Jean isn’t
there, right next to her, because she can neither see his face nor feel the warmth of his body with her hands. How she weeps, secretly, when Jean spends entire evenings with vain, flirtatious girls like Simone and Alice. She weeps the strange, bitter tears of an exhausted woman who is gradually letting herself be worn out by a symbol.

SHE WILL BE ALL ALONE
, the whole long evening. Yet she likes solitude, so why is she feeling like this? She will eat in the kitchen, feet on the bar of the stool, knees up to her chin. One plate, and a chunk of bread that she will cut into little pieces with her knife, in the way that she has seen men do on the side of the road. She will make herself some hot coffee, she will read, for a long time, without anything to distract her from her book. She’ll spend the entire evening on her own, in a delicious state of solitude.

She looks around her, around Jean and Marie’s apartment, letting her gaze wander over the furniture and the belongings. How odd everything seems; has something changed? No, the furniture and belongings have the same familiar, precious look about them, the same halo bestowed upon them by her heart, and her love is exactly as it has always been. Neither the belongings nor the feelings have changed – but they have been confronted.

Resting her hands on her forehead, Marie closes her eyes. How hot it had been! How beautiful the mountain, and the smell of crushed mint beneath their bodies! This desire she felt inside her was so strong, so blissful, so right.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE PUPIL
having prevented Marie from finishing the housework, she fills the sink with hot water and begins to wash the dishes.

A few days ago, a young woman in a linen skirt was sitting on a sunny beach. Today, a young woman plunges tanned hands into soapy water, goes down to the cellar to fetch the coal, cleans the floor, peels the vegetables. Marie thinks of other young women she knows and smiles at the astonishment they would feel if they could see her now. What did these other women think of Marie; why does she feel herself to be so different, and why has she never succeeded in really becoming their friend? Perhaps life is simpler if your world is like theirs, confined to choosing wallpaper or sofa covers, to a luxurious home, to the importance of having a maid, to immaculate receptions, to tea parties with friends where a few ideas are exchanged on the latest books. If they have a child, they love it not because it is flesh of their flesh but because it has finally given some point to their existence. They give the impression of being happy or, if they are not, they speak of happiness as an unusable, clearly defined object that need only be discovered and then hung in the apartment like a sprig of mistletoe.

If Marie had a child she would love it with all her flesh and all her heart, but she feels neither regret nor joy at the fact that she does not have one. She doesn’t want a child as one wants an ideal, she likes neither luxury nor receptions, she has scarcely any friends, she hates choosing wallpaper,
and she does not believe in happiness. Does this mean she loves nothing, awaits nothing?

She has finished her household task and before going into another room to rest and read, she lingers in the kitchen for a while. Sitting at the table, head in hands, she hears the sound of her blood, beating loudly, powerfully, rapidly, at her temples. By separating her arms from her body she can even control the pulsations through that single sensation in her head. These muffled, rhythmical shocks are accompanied by an unusual sound, like a buzzing or a reverberation. She compares it to the sound of insects’ wings – smooth, shiny.

What kind of a girl had she been? Very tall and slim, with reddish-blonde hair tied by a black ribbon at the nape of her neck, and two well-shaped breasts under her dress. Sixteen or seventeen years old; beautiful, supple, full of health and happiness; she was drunk with life, and with an overflowing heart.

Are you there, Marie? If only she could never leave me … She is there, right next to me; I can feel her heart beating. She haunts me as if she were waiting to be reborn.

If her friends were there at this moment, and asked her: ‘What are you thinking about, Marie?’, she couldn’t answer: ‘I am comparing the sound of my blood to the sound of insects’ wings.’ She’d smile, and say only: ‘Leave me be, I’m asleep.’ She’d appear weary, indifferent; she’d turn away to listen once more to the tumultuous pounding of her blood.

Does Marie love nothing, await nothing?

Marie’s heart is overflowing with love. Marie awaits Marie.