Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

‘You’re not looking well. I feel bad about making you work.’

I did not reply – I hated myself too much for making such a drama out of things, and a drama that I could no longer call a halt to. We had finished dinner. On the terrace, in the rectangle of light projected from the dining-room window, I saw Anne’s hand, a living, elongated hand, reach out to find my father’s hand. I thought of Cyril. I wished he could have taken me in his arms on that terrace, criss-crossed with cicadas and moonlight. I wished I could have been caressed, consoled and reconciled with myself. My father and Anne were silent. They had before them a night of love. I had Bergson. I tried to weep, to feel sorry for myself, but in vain. I was already feeling sorry for Anne, as if I were certain of vanquishing her.

PART TWO

One

I am surprised at how clear my memories are from that point. I was acquiring a heightened awareness both of other people and of myself. I had always taken for granted the luxury of being spontaneous and casually self-centred. I had always simply lived life. But those few days had been disturbing enough to make me start to reflect on things and to observe myself as I lived. I experienced all the throes of introspection without, even so, becoming reconciled with myself. I said to myself: ‘This feeling I have towards Anne is stupid and pitiful, and it is brutal of me to want to part her from my father.’ But after all, I thought, why should I stand in judgement over myself? I was who I was, so had I not the right to experience events in whatever way I wished? For the first time in my life this ‘self’ of mine seemed to divide in two and I was quite astonished to discover such a duality within me. I found good excuses for my feelings, I thought I was being sincere when I murmured them over to myself, yet all of a sudden that other ‘self’ came to the fore, challenging my own arguments and telling me loudly that, for all their apparent validity, I was deluding myself. But wasn’t it in fact that other self that was deceiving me? Was not this lucidity the ultimate form of mistakenness? I debated with myself in my room for hours on end in an effort to work out whether the fear and hostility that Anne was currently inspiring in me were justified or whether I was merely a selfish, spoilt little girl in the mood for some so-called independence.

In the meantime I was getting a little thinner every day. On the beach I did nothing but sleep and at mealtimes, in spite of myself, I maintained an uneasy silence which eventually they found embarrassing. I would look at Anne, I would watch her closely all the time, and all through the meal I would be saying to myself: ‘The way she gestured to him, isn’t that love, and isn’t it a kind of love he’ll not find again? And the way she smiled at me with that trace of anxiety in her eyes, how could I resent her for it?’ But all of a sudden she would be saying: ‘When we go back, Raymond …’ That’s when the thought that she was going to share our lives and have a hand in them made me bristle. She seemed then to consist only of coldness and cunning. I would say to myself: ‘She is cold, whereas we are warm-hearted. She is authoritarian, whereas we are independent. She is aloof – other people don’t interest her, but they fascinate us. She is reserved, whereas we are very merry. Only we two are truly alive and she is going to insinuate herself between us with her impassiveness. She is going to warm herself by gradually drawing from us our lovely, carefree warmth. She is going to rob us of everything, like a beautiful serpent.’ I would repeat to myself ‘a beautiful serpent … a beautiful serpent!’ Then she would offer me bread and suddenly I would come to and exclaim to myself: ‘But this is ridiculous! It’s Anne, intelligent Anne, the person who has taken care of you. Being cold is just the way she is, you can’t see any calculation behind it. Her aloofness protects her from a thousand sordid little things, it is proof of her nobility.’ A beautiful serpent … I would feel myself grow pale with shame, I would look at her, I would silently beg her to forgive me. She would sometimes catch sight of me looking at her and then surprise and uncertainty would cause her face to cloud over and make her cut short whatever she was saying. She would instinctively look towards my father and he would look back at her, be it with admiration or desire, without understanding what it was that was causing her anxiety. In a word, I gradually succeeded in making the atmosphere unbearable and I hated myself for it.

My father suffered as much as it was possible for him to suffer, which, being the man he was, was not very much, for he was mad about Anne, mad with pride and pleasure, and that was all he lived for. One day, however, when I was dozing on the beach after our morning swim, he sat down next to me and looked at me. I felt his gaze weighing on me. I was about to stand up and suggest to him, with the air of false jollity that was becoming a habit with me, that we go back into the water, when he put his hand on my head and, raising his voice, called ruefully:

‘Anne, come and look at this grasshopper, she’s so thin. If this is the effect work has on her, she really must stop.’

He thought that he was resolving the issue and no doubt ten days earlier it would have been resolved. But I was much too deep into complications, and the hours set aside for study in the afternoons were no longer a problem for me, given that I had not opened a book since Bergson.

As Anne approached, I remained lying face down on the sand listening to the sound of her steps. She sat down on the other side of me and murmured:

‘It certainly doesn’t seem to agree with her. However, she really needs to apply herself to her work instead of going round in circles in her room.’

I had turned over and was now looking at them. How did she know that I wasn’t working? Perhaps she had even read my thoughts: I believed her to be capable of anything. The idea of it frightened me.

‘I am not going round in circles in my room,’ I protested.

‘Are you missing that boy?’ my father asked.

‘No, I’m not!’

That was not quite true. But it was true that I had not had time to think about Cyril.

‘Still, you’re not well,’ said my father sternly. ‘Anne, do you see her? She’s like a chicken that has been gutted and put in the sun to roast.’

‘Cécile, dear,’ said Anne, ‘make an effort. Work a little and eat a lot. That exam is important …’

‘I don’t give a damn about my exam!’ I cried. ‘Do you understand? I don’t give a damn!’

I looked at her despairingly, straight in the eye, to get her to see that there was more than an exam at stake. What she needed to do was to say to me: ‘Well then, what’s the matter?’ She needed to badger me with questions and force me to tell her everything. And if she did that she would win me over, she would decide whatever she wanted for me, but that way I would no longer be plagued by these sour, depressing feelings of mine. She was looking at me attentively, I saw the Prussian blue of her eyes cloud over with concentration and reproach. And I realized that it would never occur to her to question me and thereby to relieve me, because not only would the idea never cross her mind but in her judgement it wasn’t the done thing. I realized that she didn’t attribute to me any of the thoughts that were destroying me or, if she did, it was with scorn and aloofness, which in any case was all that they deserved. Anne always attached to things their exact importance. That was why I would never, ever, be able to do business with her.

I threw myself down on the sand again with great force, I rested my cheek on the soft warmth of the beach, I sighed and I trembled a little. Anne’s hand, relaxed and steady, came to rest on the back of my neck and held me still for a moment until my nervous trembling stopped.