Inseparable Page 6

  “It feels good to have a little break!” she said.

  “Do you have a headache?”

  “Yes,” said Andrée with a smile. “Maybe it’s because of what I drank this morning. Normally, to get going, I drink some coffee or a glass of white wine: this morning I mixed the two.”

  “Coffee and wine?”

  “It’s not that bad. It was a real pick-me-up at the time.” Andrée stopped smiling. “I didn’t sleep at all last night. I’m so sad for Malou!”

  Andrée had never gotten along well with her sister, but she took to heart everything that happened to people.

  “Poor Malou!” she continued. “For two days, she ran around asking all her friends what they thought; they all told her to say yes. Especially Guite,” said Andrée, sniggering. “Guite said that after the age of twenty-eight, it’s unbearable to spend your nights alone!”

  “And spending them with a man you don’t love is fun?” I asked, smiling. “Does Guite still believe in love at first sacrament?”

  “I suppose,” said Andrée, nervously playing with the gold chain that held her religious medals. “Oh! It’s not that simple,” she said. “You’ll have a profession, you’ll be able to fulfill some purpose without getting married. But a useless old maid like Guite, that’s not good.”

  I often congratulated myself, egotistically, that the Bolsheviks and life’s malevolence had ruined my father: I was obliged to work, the problems that tormented Andrée didn’t concern me.

  “Is it really impossible for them to let you study for the teaching diploma?”

  “Impossible!” said Andrée. “Next year, I’ll be taking Malou’s place.”

  “And your mother will try to get you married?”

  “I think it’s already started,” Andrée replied, laughing a little. “There’s a young man from the Polytechnique who meticulously interrogates me about my tastes. I told him that I dreamed of caviar, designer clothes, and nightclubs—and that Louis Jouvet was my kind of man.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “He did at least seem worried.”

  We chatted for a few more minutes, then Andrée looked at her watch.

  “I have to go back downstairs.”

  I hated that watch—her slave bracelet. Whenever we read in the library under the peaceful light of the green lamps, drank tea on the Rue Soufflot, or walked along the paths of the Luxembourg Gardens, Andrée would suddenly glance at her watch and flee in panic: “I’m late!” She always had something else to do: her mother burdened her with chores that she carried out with the zeal of a penitent. Andrée was obstinate in her love for her mother, and even if she was resigned to disobey her about certain things, it was only because her mother gave her no choice. Shortly after my visit to Béthary—Andrée was only fifteen then—Madame Gallard had told her about the birds and the bees with such intensity and minute detail that she still shuddered when thinking back on it. Afterward, her mother had calmly allowed her to read Lucretia, Boccaccio, Rabelais: coarse if not actually obscene works that did not upset her Christian mother. But Madame Gallard irrevocably condemned authors she accused of denigrating the Catholic religion and its morals. “If you want to learn about your religion, read the Church fathers,” she’d say when she saw Andrée holding a book by Claudel, Mauriac, or Bernanos. She felt that I had a pernicious influence on Andrée and had wanted to forbid her from seeing me. Encouraged and guided by a teacher with more liberal ideas, Andrée had held fast. But to make amends for her studies, her reading, our friendship, she did her utmost to fulfill in an irreproachable manner what Madame Gallard called her social duties. That was why she had headaches so often. She hardly found time to practice the violin during the day; as for her classes, she could only barely manage to study at night, and even though she was very gifted, she didn’t sleep enough.

  Pascal often asked her to dance with him that afternoon.

  “Your friend is very nice,” he said earnestly, while accompanying me home. “I’ve seen you with her a lot at the Sorbonne: why didn’t you ever introduce me to her?”

  “It didn’t occur to me,” I said.

  “I’d like to see her again.”

  “That would be easy.”

  I was surprised he admitted he was attracted to Andrée. He was friendly toward women, perhaps even a little more so than he was toward men, but he hardly seemed to hold women in esteem; despite his universal benevolence, he remained rather unsociable. As for Andrée, when seeing a new face, her first reaction was mistrust. As she grew up, she had discovered, with outrage, the chasm that separated the teaching of the Gospels and the self-serving, egotistical, petty behavior of self-righteous people; she defended herself against their hypocrisy by adopting a firm stance of cynicism. She believed me when I told her that Pascal was very intelligent, but even though she rebelled against stupidity, she attached little importance to intelligence. “What good is that?” she asked with a kind of annoyance. I didn’t know exactly what she was looking for, but she used the same skepticism against all accepted values. If she happened to become infatuated with an artist, a writer, an actor, it was always for paradoxical reasons; she appreciated only their frivolous or even dubious qualities. Louis Jouvet had entranced her in a role as a drunkard to such an extent that she had hung his photograph up in her bedroom; these infatuations represented, above all, a challenge to the false virtues of respectable people; she didn’t take them seriously. But she did seem serious when she spoke to me about Pascal: “I found him very nice.”

  And so, Pascal came and had tea with us on Rue Soufflot and accompanied us to the Luxembourg Gardens. After the second time, I left him alone with Andrée, and afterward, they often met without me. I wasn’t jealous. Ever since that night in the kitchen in Béthary when I’d admitted to Andrée how much she meant to me, I had decided to make myself care about her a little less. She still counted enormously to me, but at present, there was the rest of the world, and myself: she was no longer everything.

  Reassured to see Andrée finish her studies without having lost either her faith or her virtue, and satisfied to have married off her oldest daughter, Madame Gallard was more permissive throughout that entire spring. Andrée looked at her watch less often; she saw Pascal a lot alone, and the three of us often went out together. He quickly became an influence on her. He had begun by laughing at her sarcastic remarks and jaded jibes; but he soon reproached her for her pessimism. “Humanity is not so dark,” he asserted. They discussed the problem of evil, sin, the state of grace, and he accused Andrée of Jansenism. She was very shocked by that. In the early days, she would be surprised and say, “He’s so young!” Then, sounding perplexed, she’d say, “When I compare myself to Pascal, I have the impression that I’m a bitter old maid.” She finally decided that he was the one who was right.

  “Thinking badly of your equals a priori,” she told me, “is to offend God.” Then she continued: “A Christian must be fastidious, but not tormented. Pascal is the first true Christian I’ve ever met!” she added passionately.

  Even more than Pascal’s arguments, it was his very existence that reconciled Andrée with human nature, with the world, with God. He believed in heaven, and he loved life, he was cheerful and irreproachable: all of humanity was not bad after all, nor all virtues false, and you could reach paradise without renouncing the earthly world. I congratulated myself that Andrée allowed herself to be persuaded. Two years earlier, her faith had seemed to waver: “There is only one type of faith possible,” she’d told me then, “and that is blind faith.” Afterward, she’d changed her thinking. All I could hope was that she didn’t have too cruel an idea of religion. Pascal, who shared her beliefs, was better placed than I was to assure her that it wasn’t criminal to sometimes think about yourself. Without condemning Madame Gallard, he confirmed to Andrée that she’d been right to stand up for her personal life. “God does not want us to demean ourselves and become like animals: if He has granted us His gifts, it’s so that we will u
se them,” he often told her. These words filled Andrée with enthusiasm; you would have thought that an enormous weight had been lifted from her shoulders. As the chestnut trees in the Luxembourg Gardens were covered in buds, then leaves and flowers, I watched her transform. In her flannel suit, straw cloche hat, and gloves, she had the reserved appearance of a respectable young woman. Pascal gently teased her.

  “Why do you always wear hats that hide your face? Do you ever take off your gloves? Is it possible to suggest to such a proper person that they sit down outside a café?”

  She looked happy when he teased her. She didn’t buy a new hat, but she left her gloves at the bottom of her handbag and sat outside the cafés on the Boulevard Saint-Michel; the way she carried herself once more became as lively as when we used to go for walks beneath the pine trees. Up until then, Andrée’s beauty had remained more or less a secret: it existed deep in her eyes, suddenly flashing across her face for an instant, but was never completely visible. Suddenly, her beauty rose to the surface, burst into view. I can remember her one morning and the scent of fresh grass on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. She had taken the oars; with no hat, no gloves, and bare arms, she skillfully parted the water. Her hair was shiny, her eyes alive. Pascal let his hand drift through the water as he softly sang a song: he had a nice voice and knew a lot of songs.

  He too was changing. In front of his father and especially his sister, he seemed like a very young boy; but he spoke to Andrée with the authority of a man. Not that he was playing a role: he simply rose to her need of him. Or perhaps I hadn’t really known him, or maybe he was maturing. In any case, he no longer seemed like a young man from the seminary. I found him less angelic than in the past, but more cheerful; and cheerfulness became him. On the afternoon of May 1, he was waiting for us in front of the Luxembourg Gardens; when he saw us, he climbed onto the balustrade and headed toward us, taking the tiny steps of a tightrope walker, using his arms to steady himself. In each hand, he held a bouquet of lilies of the valley. He jumped down and held them out to both of us at the same time. My flowers were just there for symmetry: Pascal had never given me flowers. Andrée understood, because she blushed: it was the second time in our lives that I had seen her blush. “They love each other,” I thought. It was a very lucky thing to be loved by Andrée; but I was especially overjoyed for her. She would not have been able, or have wanted, to marry someone who wasn’t a believer; if she had resigned herself to loving an austere Christian, like Monsieur Gallard, she would have died. With Pascal, she could finally reconcile her duty and her happiness.

  At the end of that year, we didn’t have very much to do; we wandered around a lot. None of us was rich. Madame Gallard allowed her daughters only enough pocket money to buy bus tickets and stockings; Monsieur Blondel wanted Pascal to dedicate himself exclusively to his exams, he forbade him from giving private lessons, preferring to take on the burden of more hours of work himself; and I had only two students who paid very little. We still managed, however, to go to the Ursulines movie theater to watch intellectual films and avant-garde plays in the theaters of the Cartel des Quatre.* When we came out, I always had long discussions with Andrée. Pascal would listen with an air of indulgence. He claimed he loved nothing but philosophy. Art and literature, deemed gratuitous, bored him; but when they claimed to represent life, he judged them as false. He said that in reality, feelings and situations were not as subtle or dramatic as in books. Andrée found this simplistic attitude refreshing. Basically, she tended to see the world as too tragic, so it was better for her that Pascal’s wisdom was rather limited but optimistic.

  After her oral exam, which she passed brilliantly, Andrée left to go for a walk with Pascal. He never invited her to his place, and she undoubtedly would not have agreed to go: without going into precise detail, she told her mother that she was going out with me and some other friends, but she would not have wished to either admit or hide that she had spent the afternoon at the home of a young man. They always saw each other outside and went for many walks.

  I met her the next day in our usual spot, beneath the cold expression of the stone statue of a queen. I’d bought some cherries, the fat black cherries she liked, but she refused to taste them; she seemed worried. After a moment, she spoke: “I talked to Pascal about what happened between me and Bernard.” Her voice was tense.

  “You’d never told him about it?”

  “No. I’ve wanted to for a long time. I felt I had to talk to him about it, but I didn’t dare.” She hesitated. “I was afraid he’d think very badly of me.”

  “But why!” I said.

  Even though I’d known Andrée for ten years, she often mystified me.

  “Bernard and I never did anything wrong,” she said in a serious voice, “but we did kiss, and they weren’t platonic kisses. Pascal is so pure. I was afraid he’d be terribly shocked.” Then she added with conviction: “But he’s only harsh with himself.”

  “How could he have been shocked?” I said. “You and Bernard were children, and you loved each other.”

  “You can sin at any age,” said Andrée, “and love doesn’t excuse everything.”

  “Pascal must have found you very Jansenistic!” I said.

  I didn’t understand her scruples very well; it’s also true that I didn’t realize exactly what those childlike kisses meant to her.

  “He understood,” she said. “He always understands everything.” She looked around her. “And to think that I thought about killing myself when Mama separated me from Bernard: I was so sure I’d love him forever!” There was a nervous hesitation in her voice.

  “At fifteen, it’s normal to make mistakes,” I said.

  Andrée traced lines in the sand with the tips of her shoes. “How old do you have to be before you have the right to think: this is forever?”

  Her face hardened when she was worried, it looked almost skeletal.

  “You’re not making a mistake now,” I said.

  “That’s what I think too,” she said. She continued drawing wavy lines on the ground. “But what about the other person, the one you love, how can you be sure he’ll love you forever?”

  “You must be able to sense it,” I said.

  She pulled a few cherries out of the brown paper bag and ate them in silence.

  “Pascal told me that until now, he’d never been in love with any woman,” Andrée said.

  She looked straight at me.

  “He didn’t say, ‘I’d never loved,’ he said, ‘I have never loved.’”

  I smiled. “Pascal is scrupulous; he weighs his words.”

  “He asked me if we could take Communion together tomorrow morning,” said Andrée.

  I didn’t reply. I thought that if I were Andrée, I would have been jealous seeing Pascal take Communion; a human being is so insignificant compared to God. Yet it’s true that in the past, I had felt tremendous love for both Andrée and God at the same time.

  From that point on, it was understood by Andrée and me that she loved Pascal. As for him, he spoke to her more confidently than in the past. He told her that between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, he had wanted to become a priest. His sister had encouraged him, but his spiritual adviser had shown him that it wasn’t his true vocation. What he was seeking at the seminary was a refuge from the outside world and the adult responsibilities that frightened him. That fear had persisted for a long time and explained Pascal’s prejudices where women were concerned: at present, he reproached himself severely. “Purity does not consist in seeing every woman as harboring a devil,” he cheerfully told Andrée. Before meeting her, he had made an exception only for his sister, whom he considered a pure spirit, and for me, because I had such little awareness of being a woman. He now understood that women were, in their capacity as women, God’s creatures. “However, there is only one Andrée in the world,” he’d added, and with so much warmth that she no longer doubted that he loved her.

  “Will you write to each other over the summer vac
ation?” I asked Andrée.

  “Yes.”

  “What will Madame Gallard say?”

  “Mama never opens my letters,” said Andrée, “and she’ll have other things to do besides keeping an eye on the mail.”

  The summer was going to be particularly hectic because of Malou’s engagement; Andrée talked about it to me with a sense of apprehension.

  “Would you come,” she asked me, “if Mama let me invite you?”

  “She won’t let you,” I said.

  “That’s not definite. Mine and Lélette will be in England, and the twins are too young for you to be a dangerous influence,” Andrée said, laughing. “Mama trusts me now,” she added in a serious tone of voice. “I’ve had difficult moments but ended up by earning her trust: she’s no longer afraid you’ll corrupt me.”

  I suspected that Andrée wanted me to come not simply because of our friendship, but because she could talk to me about Pascal; I couldn’t have asked for anything better than to be the one she confided in, and I was very happy when Andrée told me she was counting on me at the beginning of September.

  DURING THE MONTH OF AUGUST, I received only two very short letters from Andrée; she wrote from her bed, at dawn. “During the day, I don’t have a minute to myself,” she said. She was sleeping in a room with her grandmother, who was a light sleeper; to write letters or read, she waited until the light slipped through the shutters on the window. The house at Béthary was full of people; there was the fiancé and his two sisters, frail old maids who didn’t let Andrée out of their sight, as well as their Rivière de Bonneuil cousins. While celebrating Malou’s engagement, Madame Gallard was still organizing meetings with prospective suitors for Andrée; it was a hectic summer with one party followed by the next. “This is how I imagine hell,” Andrée wrote to me. In September, she had to accompany Malou to visit her fiancé’s parents: the very thought of it depressed her. Fortunately, she was getting long letters from Pascal. I couldn’t wait to see her. That year, I was bored in Sadernac; solitude weighed heavily on me.