The Fires of Autumn (17 page)

She ran out of the apartment.

Outside, the fog had lifted and she saw with some surprise that the clock on the church said seven o’clock. She laughed nervously as tears streamed down her face. ‘It’s this cold
February morning that’s making me cry,’ she told herself. ‘What a funny time for a tryst! Really, he would have seen at once that I’m not used to such things. You don’t go and throw yourself into someone’s arms at seven o’clock in the morning. Really, Thérèse, honestly! It’s quite obvious that you aren’t cut out for amorous adventures. Set the table and see to the meals. Leave it to other people to …’

She stopped. No. She would not go home! She would see him. She would know what time he got back, whether he was alone or not, with friends or with a woman. Almost directly opposite his house was a café that was already open, with seats outside on the pavement; it was completely empty in this weather. Too bad! She was dressed in warm clothing. And besides, she would not feel the cold; she was shaking and burning hot. She sat down at a table, ordered a milky coffee and waited. Hours passed by. Every now and again, the fog lifted, allowing a glimmer of wintry, yellowish light to shine through, then fell again to cover the street in mist. Thérèse could smell the sickly odour of rain and swamps; she bought a bouquet of violets from a little girl to block out the unpleasant smell and instinctively breathed in the scent of the flowers. A crowd of people rushed towards the metro. No one even noticed this slim young woman dressed in mourning sitting outside the café. Paris was now awake; you could hear its noises, the shrill bells, the shouts of the newspaper sellers, the taxi horns. The fog had completely gone. From the vast, grey, dreary sky, drops of rain fell every now and then, like tears that are difficult to shed when your heart is too heavy with pain.

It was almost twelve o’clock when Thérèse recognised Bernard’s car stopping in front of his house. He got out. She ran across the street and rushed inside the house at the same time as him. They met on the stairs. Terrified, she thought: ‘I’ll say I lost a piece of jewellery at his place last night, my brooch …’ But when she
was standing facing him, a final surge of pride prevented her from telling any humiliating lie.

‘I’ll tell him the truth,’ she thought. ‘I’m not ashamed. I love him.’

In a cool, emotionless voice that sounded strange even to her, she whispered:

‘I waited for you last night and you never came. I waited for you all morning and you never came. I wanted to see you, because …’

She weakened; he had led her to the lift and they were alone, going up to his floor. They rose slowly together, and Thérèse wished it would never stop, for the lift was dark and she could not see Bernard’s face. They went into his apartment; in the light, Thérèse looked at Bernard. He was pale, dishevelled, his eyes were red and stubble showed on his chin, the light, harsh stubble that you find on a corpse. Suddenly, it was she who felt more in control, stronger. She put her arms around him.

‘Bernard, my darling! What have they done to you?’

She held him close; she held him as if she were his mother; she understood everything.

‘It’s Renée, isn’t it? She has another lover? You found out last night?’

He nodded. Renée had cheated on him with a man who was old and rich. He was ashamed to be tormented by this. How naïve he still was! He had been suspicious for a long time. The night before, he had been struck by her mother’s secretive attitude and followed her to a house that the Détangs had just bought in the woods outside Fontainebleau. There, Madame Humbert had prepared supper and a bedroom for the couple.

‘I had no illusions,’ said Bernard. In the effort he had to make to speak, to open his trembling mouth, he had bitten his lip; it started to bleed. Thérèse, distressed, watched the blood running down. He was suffering because of another woman, and yet … 
this other woman was far away. But she, Thérèse, was with him, in his arms. He would feel consoled.

No! He had no illusions. He knew what Renée was like. What insult could possibly upset her? He called her a ‘little bitch’, a ‘slut’, and she laughed. Perhaps he should hit her? No, that would make her too happy, he thought bitterly. Forget her? He couldn’t. Logic dictated that he simply had to accept her other lover, but he was jealous. It was a feeling that filled him with shame and fury. That woman, that whole world, all those people, that swarm of animals … In theory, everything was simple. In reality, he would never forget the lights in those windows, her mother who set flowers on the table and turned down the bed.

‘It’s over, over,’ he cried, ‘it’s all over! Those people and their vile schemes, their money, their pleasures! I’ve had enough! I loathe them! I’m done with them! They aren’t human beings; they’re a herd of wild beasts. You have no idea how much damage they are doing. They don’t even realise it themselves. Nothing seems important, they’re having fun, joking, making money … They make everything they touch dirty, destroy everything. They have lost all sense of integrity and honour. And I don’t want to be like them, I don’t! Do you understand?’ he shouted in a rage. ‘I don’t want to become a complacent gigolo, then a crook, or a shark, and end up a complete and utter bastard! Help me, Thérèse … You’re a good woman; you love me … Please help me to free myself of them, help me to forget … to forget her …’

‘Her … Renée …,’ he said sadly, over and over again, ‘Renée …’ and every time he said the name, Thérèse was overwhelmed by jealous despair. Eventually, he calmed down. Silently, hand in hand, they wandered into the large sitting room. These walls, these masks, these paintings, all this strange furniture would all disappear, thought Thérèse. The memory of Renée, that too would fade with time. She thought of those upsetting, guilty dreams that come to trouble the best of souls
and then are gone the next morning. In exactly the same way, he would forget Renée and the life he had known, and it would be because of her. He would not miss Renée once he had a faithful wife and a real home. She wrapped her arms around Bernard’s neck. She kissed him and he kissed her back. By the time they said goodbye, they were engaged.

In the happiest marriages, the husband and wife either know everything about each other or absolutely nothing. Mediocre marriages are based on partial confidences: one of you lets slip a confession, a sigh; a fragment of some dream or desire is shared, but then fear sets in; it is retracted. ‘No,’ you cry, ‘you misunderstood … You know you shouldn’t take everything I say literally,’ you exclaim like a coward. You rush about trying to fix the mask back in place, but it is too late: the
other
has seen your tears, a certain smile, an expression that is hard to forget … He pretends not to notice, if he is wise. If not, he becomes fiercely determined, insistent: ‘But you just said … Listen, I don’t understand, you just admitted it yourself …’ Then you say: ‘Swear to me that you don’t miss that woman … Swear to me that you don’t miss that other life …’

In the darkness of their marriage bed, Thérèse whispered softly once more:

‘Swear to me that you never think about Renée any more … Swear that you’re happy …’

‘I am,’ he would say. ‘Don’t upset yourself. Go to sleep.’

Happy? She could not understand. He was bored – and that was an illness impossible to cure. His boredom, a kind of gloomy
inertia of the soul, had set in very soon after they were married. They had just settled into a modest, reasonably priced apartment. They had a son, good health, their youth and enough money to live on. Bernard had a job: he worked at a bank, earning two thousand eight hundred francs a month, and could look forward to becoming a senior banking executive when he was forty, and assistant director at sixty. For several months he had tried to broker personal deals with his friends in the United States, but he realised quite quickly that selling American goods in France with government Ministers backing him was easy, but alone, he was destined to fail: Détang did not forgive anyone who dropped him. Bernard reasoned that he had proved his wisdom by abandoning that other life, by seeking a steady, stable position; he had slipped back into the bourgeois existence of his father just as you find yourself sleeping in the bed where your parents died: you shudder a bit; you feel vaguely nostalgic; then you tell yourself: ‘This furniture is really old-fashioned.’ But it is warm; you snuggle up under the large red quilt; and the old couple had not been unhappy, not really … All you have to do is to be like them; you’ll get used to it.

Thérèse and Bernard slept in a narrow, warm bedroom; next door, slept their little boy – Yves. In the morning, Bernard went to the office; he came home for lunch; he went back to work; he was not interested in his work; it was simple and soul-destroying. He came home for dinner; he listened to the radio; he read the newspaper; he went to the cinema once a week. He wanted for nothing, really. But he missed everything: he felt that he allowed his professional and home life to touch merely a superficial part of his existence; he went along with everyone; Thérèse understood very well that she did not know the real Bernard, that she caught only brief glimpses of him in sudden, almost terrifying bursts. ‘But, really,’ she thought, ‘what is it that he needs? What does he want?’ He misses the money he used to earn so easily, she thought,
bitterly. How wrong she was! It wasn’t the money he missed, it was a way of life that was fun, exciting, that turned every passing minute into an adventure. For four years now, men had adopted all sorts of new habits: anguish, sadness, despair, crass or heroic attitudes towards death. But they had lost the old, healthy habit of being bored. Many people had spoken of boredom in the trenches, but there it was based on either suffering or hope. ‘In fact, perhaps that is what we are really seeking,’ thought Bernard, ‘to tremble with fear, to feel a thrill, to take chances, to cheat death … we should have been offered great new adventures … more battles, a new world to build. All we were offered was money and women. One thing still to dream of: a car, a Hispano-Suiza. In the past, when I did dubious deals for Détang or when I was in love with Renée, I had a taste of deep, sharp, almost painful joy, the joy of pride, of vanity, of being alive (vain, false feelings perhaps, but what did that matter!). While now … And, of course, there was Renée …’

He closed his eyes. He made love to his wife while thinking of another woman. Renée, her whims, her immorality, her mercenary nature, yes, all that was possibly true … But her eyes, her soft skin, always cold on her breasts and hips … He let out a harsh, deep sigh in the darkness.

‘Can’t you sleep, my darling?’ his wife asked.

No, he couldn’t sleep. Shyly, she took his hand. She always was careful with him, behaving fearfully, as if she were standing on a stretch of water covered in thin ice: sometimes it could support your weight, sometimes it would crack and dissolve beneath your feet. Sometimes she believed he was the most dependable of men, honest, lively, energetic … her real husband, the one God had given her and who would grow old with her. At those times, she would say something like: ‘In ten years we’ll buy a little house in the country. In fifteen years …’ But he would reply: ‘Where will we be in ten years?’

Then she would realise he was drifting away from her. He imagined a future that would perhaps be brilliant, wonderful, but instinctively she hated that idea because it did not resemble the present. She only felt comfortable in the present: her bedroom with its pink wallpaper, their large, comfortable bed, the sound of her little boy sleeping in the darkness. She wanted to keep all those things; she wanted nothing more. But he was not content with such simple happiness; he was troubled and anxious; she could not put her finger on what was upsetting him. She did not understand him. Did he regret having married her?

‘No, a thousand times no,’ he would reply, ‘you know that I love you.’

One night, ten years into their marriage, ten years as tepid and constricting as their narrow bedroom (to Bernard it felt as though their existence had taken on the colour of the walls themselves, an old-fashioned pink dotted with pale little flowers), one night he and Thérèse were in bed together. He had turned off the light; he was about to go to sleep when she whispered in his ear:

‘We’re going to have another child, Bernard.’

She knew he did not want another child. But she was struck by the violence of his response:

‘Oh, no!’ he shouted. ‘That’s all we need! What a disaster!’

Tears in her eyes, she tried to laugh.

‘Aren’t you ashamed?’ she protested. ‘What about me? I’m so happy …’

‘My poor Thérèse, think about it …’

‘We’re young. You earn a good living … I don’t think having two children is so terrible.’

‘Terrible? No. But it’s one more tie.’

He had whispered those words very quickly and very quietly; they escaped his lips almost unconsciously, betraying him. During the day, when he was in control of himself, he would never have so clearly admitted that he was tired of his wife, of his home, of
his son. Never would he have let the truth slip out: that he had seen Renée a few weeks before and she had become his mistress again. But in the darkness, on the verge of falling asleep, sometimes you simply don’t have the strength to lie. Well, yes, it was one more shackle that chained him to this mediocre existence. God! Why hadn’t he remained free! Renée was just as seductive as ever. He had aged; he was more cynical than before; he would only ask of her what she was capable of giving. He wouldn’t dream of leaving Thérèse. Certainly not! But it was horrifying to realise that she held on to him so tightly, that she had forged so many bonds to keep him forever.

They both fell silent, holding their breath. ‘He doesn’t love me any more,’ thought Thérèse. But the idea came and went in a flash: when reality is too bitter, we reject it; the heart protects itself against the truth and tirelessly invents its own dreams:

‘It will all pass,’ Thérèse told herself. ‘We’re just going through a bad time. He’s tired. He probably has problems I don’t understand. Men often don’t want children. We already have a son. But he’ll grow to love the next one, and … he does love me. And I love him so very, very much.’