Inseparable Page 10

  Three days passed before Andrée could find time to see me again; we arranged to meet at the tea shop at Au Printemps. All around me, women wearing perfume ate cakes and talked about the cost of living. Since the day she was born, Andrée was destined to be like them: but she wasn’t. I wondered what words I would find to say to her: I hadn’t even been able to find any to console myself.

  Andrée walked quickly over to me. “I’m late!”

  “That doesn’t matter at all.”

  She was often late, not because she had no scruples but because she was torn between conflicting scruples.

  “I’m sorry we had to meet here,” she said, “but I have so little time.” She put her handbag and a collection of samples on the table. “I’ve already been to four department stores!”

  “What a job!” I said.

  I knew the routine. When the younger Gallards needed a coat or a dress, Andrée would make the rounds of the best department stores and a few specialist boutiques: she would then return with samples, and after a family consultation, Madame Gallard would choose one fabric, taking into account its quality and price. This time, it was about having wedding outfits made, so it was a serious decision.

  “But your parents are hardly short of money,” I said impatiently.

  “No, but they think that money is not meant to be wasted,” said Andrée.

  It wouldn’t have been a waste, I thought, to spare Andrée the fatigue and boredom of such complicated purchases. She had yellowish dark circles under her eyes, her makeup clashed harshly with her pale skin. Nevertheless, to my great astonishment, she smiled.

  “I think that the twins would look adorable in this blue silk.”

  I agreed with disinterest.

  “You look tired,” I said.

  “The big department stores always give me a headache; I’ll take some aspirin.”

  She ordered a glass of water and some tea.

  “You should see a doctor: you get headaches too often.”

  “Oh! They’re migraines; they come and go, I’m used to it,” said Andrée as she dissolved two aspirins in a glass of water. She smiled and drank it.

  “Pascal told me about your conversation,” she said. “He was a little upset because he got the impression that you were judging him very harshly.” She gave me a serious look. “You mustn’t!”

  “I don’t think he’s bad,” I said.

  I had no other choice. Since Andrée had to leave, it was better that she trusted Pascal.

  “It’s true that I always exaggerate things,” she said. “I think I have no strength left; but people always do.”

  She was nervously closing and opening her fingers, but her face was calm.

  “All my unhappiness is because I don’t have enough faith,” she added. “I must have faith in Mama, in Pascal, in God: then I’ll be able to feel they don’t hate each other and don’t mean me any harm.”

  She seemed to be talking to herself rather than to me, which was not what she normally did.

  “Yes,” I said. “You know that Pascal loves you and that in the end, you’ll get married, so two years isn’t all that long . . .”

  “It’s better if I go away,” she said. “They’re right, and I know that very well. I know very well that yielding to the flesh is a sin: I must avoid the temptations of the flesh. We must be brave enough to face the facts,” Andrée added.

  I said nothing, then asked, “Will you be free over there? Will you have time for yourself?”

  “I’ll take a few classes and I’ll have a lot of time,” said Andrée. She took a sip of tea; her hands had calmed down. “In that respect, my trip to England is a good opportunity; if I stayed in Paris, I would have a horrible life. In Cambridge, I’ll be able to breathe.”

  “You must eat and sleep,” I said.

  “Don’t worry; I’ll be reasonable. But I want to work,” said Andrée, her voice animated. “I’ll read the English poets, there are some beautiful ones. I might try to translate something. And I’d especially like to study the English novel. I think there are many things to be said about the novel, things that have never been said.” She smiled. “My ideas are still a little vague, but I’ve had lots of ideas recently.”

  “I’d love for you to tell me about them.”

  “And I want to talk about them with you.” Andrée finished her tea. “Next time, I’ll arrange to have more time. I apologize for having put you out for five minutes; I just wanted to tell you that you don’t have to worry about me anymore. I’ve understood that things are exactly as they should be.”

  I left the tearoom with her and said goodbye at the candy counter. She gave me a big, encouraging smile:

  “I’ll call you. See you soon!”

  I LEARNED about the events that followed directly from Pascal. I made him tell me about what happened so often and in such detail that my mind can barely distinguish it from my personal memories. It was two days later, late in the afternoon. Monsieur Blondel was correcting homework in his office; Emma was peeling vegetables. Pascal wasn’t home yet. The doorbell rang. Emma dried her hands and went to open the door. She found herself facing a young girl with dark hair, properly dressed in a gray suit, but wearing no hat, which, at the time, was completely unusual.

  “I’d like to speak to Monsieur Blondel,” said Andrée.

  Emma thought she was one of her father’s former students and showed Andrée into the office. Monsieur Blondel looked in surprise at this young stranger walking toward him, holding out her hand.

  “Hello, Monsieur. I’m Andrée Gallard.”

  “Excuse me,” he said, shaking her hand, “but I don’t remember you . . .”

  She sat down and casually crossed her legs. “Pascal didn’t tell you about me?”

  “Oh! So you’re a friend of Pascal’s?” said Monsieur Blondel.

  “Not a friend,” she said, looking around her. “He isn’t home?”

  “No . . .”

  “Where is he?” she asked, sounding worried. “Is he already in heaven?”

  Monsieur Blondel looked at her closely: her cheeks were bright red; it was obvious she had a fever.

  “He’ll be home very soon,” he said.

  “Never mind. You’re the one I came to see,” said Andrée.

  She was shivering.

  “Are you looking at me to see if I have the mark of sin on my face? I swear to you that I am not a sinner; I’ve always fought,” she said passionately, “always.”

  “You seem like a very nice young lady,” stammered Monsieur Blondel, who was beginning to feel concerned; and to make matters worse, he was a little deaf.

  “I’m not a saint,” she said, wiping her forehead with her hand. “I’m not a saint, but I won’t hurt Pascal. I’m begging you: don’t force me to go away!”

  “Go away? But where?”

  “So you don’t know: my mother is going to send me to England if you force me to leave.”

  “I’m not forcing you,” said Monsieur Blondel. “There’s been some misunderstanding.” The word consoled him. “A misunderstanding,” he said again.

  “I know how to manage a household,” said Andrée. “Pascal will want for nothing. And I’m not a social butterfly. If I had a little time to play my violin and to see Sylvie, I’d ask for nothing more.”

  She looked at Monsieur Blondel anxiously. “Don’t you think I’m being reasonable?”

  “Completely reasonable.”

  “Well then, why are you against me?”

  “My dear girl, again, I’m telling you there’s been some misunderstanding,” said Monsieur Blondel. “I’m not against you.”

  He understood nothing at all about what was going on, but he felt sorry for this young woman whose cheeks were on fire; he wanted to reassure her and had spoken with such conviction that Andrée’s face relaxed.

  “Really?”

  “I swear to you.”

  “Then you won’t forbid us to have children?”

  “Of course not.
”

  “Seven children would be too many,” said Andrée, “there’s always one problem child, of course; but three or four would be good.”

  “Why don’t you tell me your story,” said Monsieur Blondel.

  “Yes,” said Andrée. She thought for a moment. “You see, I told myself that I should have the strength to leave for Cambridge, I told myself I would. And this morning, when I got up, I understood that I couldn’t. So I came to ask you to take pity on me.”

  “I’m not an enemy,” said Monsieur Blondel. “Tell me everything.”

  She began, in a rather logical way. Pascal heard her voice through the door and was stunned.

  “Andrée!” he said reproachfully as he came into the room. But his father gestured to him.

  “Mademoiselle Gallard needed to speak to me, and I’m very happy to have met her,” he said. “But she’s very tired; she has a fever. You’ll take her back to her mother.”

  Pascal went over to Andrée and took her hand.

  “Yes,” he said, “you do have a fever.”

  “It’s nothing. I’m happy: your father doesn’t hate me!”

  Pascal stroked Andrée’s hair. “Wait here, I’ll call a taxi.”

  His father followed him out to the adjoining room and told him about Andrée’s visit.

  “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?” he asked reproachfully.

  “I was certainly wrong not to,” said Pascal.

  He suddenly felt something unknown, disturbing, unbearable rising in his throat. Andrée had closed her eyes; they waited for the taxi in silence. He took her arm and led her down the stairs. In the car, she rested her head against his shoulder.

  “Pascal, why have you never kissed me?”

  He kissed her.

  Pascal briefly explained everything to Madame Gallard; they sat down together at the end of Andrée’s bed. “You won’t go away, everything’s arranged,” said Madame Gallard.

  Andrée smiled. “We have to order some champagne,” she said.

  And then she became delirious. The doctor prescribed tranquilizers; he talked about meningitis, encephalitis, but made no firm diagnosis.

  A telegram from Madame Gallard informed me that Andrée had been delirious all night. The doctors said she had to be put in isolation, and she was taken to the private hospital in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where they tried everything to bring down her fever. She spent three days alone with a nurse.

  “I want Pascal, Sylvie, my violin, and some champagne,” she said again and again, rambling. The fever didn’t come down.

  Madame Gallard stayed with her on the fourth night; in the morning, Andrée recognized her.

  “Am I going to die?” she asked. “I can’t die before the wedding: the little ones will look so adorable in that blue silk!”

  She was so weak that she could barely speak. She said the same thing several times: “I’m going to ruin the celebration! I ruin everything! I’ve never given you anything but trouble!”

  Later on, she squeezed her mother’s hands.

  “Don’t be sad,” she said. “There’s a problem child in every family: and that’s me.”

  She may have said other things, but Madame Gallard did not repeat them to Pascal. When I called the hospital around ten o’clock, they told me, “It’s over.” The doctors had never made a diagnosis.

  I saw Andrée in the hospital’s chapel, laid out amid a row of candles and flowers. She was wearing one of her long nightdresses made of coarse cotton. Her hair had grown; it fell in straight locks around her yellowish face, so thin that you could barely make out her features. Her hands, with their long, pale claws, were crossed over a crucifix, and looked as brittle as an old mummy’s.

  She was buried in the little cemetery at Béthary, amid the dust of her ancestors. Madame Gallard was sobbing. “We were only the instruments of God,” Monsieur Gallard said to her. The grave was covered in white flowers.

  In some strange way, I understood that Andrée had died, suffocated by that whiteness. Before leaving to catch my train, I placed three red roses on top of those pristine flowers.

  Afterword

  by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir

  A young brunette with short hair sits down beside Simone de Beauvoir, age nine, then a student at the Catholic Adeline Désir School. She is Élisabeth Lacoin, called Zaza, and only a few days older than Simone. Unaffected, funny, and bold, she is in sharp contrast to the prevailing conformism. But at the start of the following school year, Zaza is not there. Depressing and oppressive, the world is a dark place, until suddenly the latecomer arrives and with her the sun, joy, and happiness. Her lively intelligence and many talents seduce Simone; she admires her, is captivated. They compete for the top places in the class and become inseparable. Not that Simone doesn’t have a happy family life with her beloved young mother, respected father, and submissive younger sister. But what has happened to the little ten-year-old girl is her first emotional encounter: her feelings for Zaza are passionate; she venerates her, is terrified of displeasing her. In the poignant vulnerability of childhood, she does not, of course, understand the early manifestation of love at first sight; it is to us, her witnesses, that it is so moving. Her long conversations alone with Zaza are infinitely priceless to her. Oh! Their upbringing constrains them—no obvious familiarity, they use the formal vous with each other—but despite their reserve, they speak in a way that Simone has never spoken to anyone. What is this unknown feeling, the feeling that, under the conventional label of “friendship,” fills her young heart with passion, wonder, and ecstasy, if not “love”? She understands very quickly that Zaza does not feel the same attachment to her, nor does she suspect Simone’s intense feeling, but why should that matter given the blossoming of love?

  Zaza dies suddenly, one month before her twenty-second birthday, on November 25, 1929, an unforeseen catastrophe that continues to haunt Simone. For a long time, her friend appeared in her dreams, her yellowish face beneath a wide-brimmed pink hat, looking at her with reproach. To counteract the void and to never forget her, Simone’s only recourse is the alchemy of literature. Four times, in various forms—in the unpublished novels written in her youth, in her collection entitled Quand prime le spirituel (When Things of the Spirit Come First), in a passage removed from the novel Les mandarins (The Mandarins), which won her the Prix Goncourt in 1954—four times the writer had already tried to bring Zaza back to life, in vain. In 1954 she tries again in a short, untitled novel that we are publishing here for the very first time. This final, fictional transposition leaves her unsatisfied but leads her, via an essential detour, to a decisive literary transformation. In 1958, she merges her autobiographical writing with the story of the life and death of Zaza into what would become Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter).

  The finished novel, conserved by Simone despite her critical judgment of it, is of the greatest importance: confronted by a mystery, questioning intensifies and the various ways of approaching the subject increase, along with the possible perspectives and clarifications. And Zaza’s death remains, in part, a mystery. The two writings of 1954 and 1958 that shed light on it do not exactly coincide. It is in this novel that, for the first time, the theme of their great friendship takes pride of place. Those enigmatic friendships, which, like love, caused Montaigne to remark about the relationship between himself and La Boétie: “Because it was him, because it was me.”* Standing beside Andrée, the literary incarnation of Zaza, is a narrator who says “I”: her friend Sylvie. The two “inseparable” friends are reunited, in the novel as in life, to face what had happened, but it is Sylvie who, through the prism of her friendship, recounts the events, using a contrasting technique to reveal the abiding ambiguity.

  The choice of fiction implied various transpositions and modifications necessary to decipher. The last names of the characters, the places, and the family situations differ from reality: Élisabeth Lacoin is Andrée Gallard and Simone de Beauvoir becomes Syl
vie Lepage. The Gallard family—the Mabilles in Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée—has seven children, only one of whom is a boy. The Lacoins had nine children, six girls and three boys. Simone had only one sister, while her alias, Sylvie, has two. The Adélaïde School is easily recognizable as the famous Désir School, located on the Rue Jacob in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris. It was there that their teachers christened the two girls “inseparable.” Since this term creates a bridge between reality and fiction, it is used as the title of this work. Maurice Merleau-Ponty* becomes Pascal Blondel (Pradelle in the Mémoires), and has a sister who bears no resemblance to Emma in the novel. The Meyrignac estate in Limousin is transformed into Sadernac, while Béthary is Gagnepan, where Simone stayed twice; it is one of the two residences of the Lacoin family in the Landes region, the other being Haubardin in Saint-Pandelon, which is where Zaza is buried.

  So what caused Zaza’s death?

  According to cold, objective science, it was viral encephalitis. But was there a deadly cause that went much deeper, ensnared her entire existence in its net, finally weakened her, exhausted her, depressed her, and led to her madness and death? Simone would have replied that Zaza died because she was extraordinary. She was assassinated; her death was a “spiritualistic crime.”

  Zaza died because she tried to be herself and was convinced that such a desire was evil. She was born on December 25, 1907, into an upper-class, militant Catholic family, a family with strict traditions that required a dutiful daughter to be selfless, resigned, and malleable. Because Zaza was exceptional, she could not “adjust”—a sinister term that means fitting into a predetermined mold where a small dungeon awaits you, one among many; anything outside that dungeon will be constricted, crushed, thrown away like trash. Zaza could not fit the prototype; her uniqueness was destroyed. Therein lay the crime, the assassination. Simone remembers with a sense of horror a Lacoin family photo at Gagnepan, each of the nine children lined up according to their age, the six girls in the same blue taffeta dress, wearing identical straw hats decorated with cornflowers. Zaza stood in the place assigned to her for all of eternity: the second of the Lacoin daughters. The young Simone violently rejected that image. No, Zaza was not as portrayed; she was “unique.”