Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

‘Don’t make life complicated for yourself,’ she said. ‘You used to be so happy and always on the go, you’re usually so scatter-brained, and now you’re becoming sad and cerebral. That’s just not you.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m really a healthy, irresponsible young creature full of fun and silliness.’

‘Come and have lunch,’ she said.

My father had moved away from us. He hated that kind of discussion. On the way back along the track he took my hand and held it. His hand was firm and comforting. It had wiped away my tears after my first unhappy experience of love, it had held my hand at moments of peacefulness and perfect happiness and had squeezed it surreptitiously at times when we were conspiring together and were assailed by fits of giggles. That hand on the steering wheel or clutching the keys, of an evening, while searching in vain for the keyhole, that hand on a woman’s shoulder or holding a cigarette, it could no longer be of any help to me. I squeezed it very tightly. Turning towards me, he smiled.

Two

Two days passed. I was exhausting myself going round in circles. I could not rid myself of the one thought that haunted me: Anne was going to turn our lives upside down. I made no attempt to see Cyril again; he would have reassured me and would have brought me some happiness, and I didn’t want that. I even took a certain satisfaction in asking myself questions to which there were no answers, in remembering days just gone and dreading those that were to come. It was very hot. My room was in semi-darkness with the shutters closed, but it wasn’t enough to relieve the unbearable oppressiveness and mugginess in the air. I lay on my bed with my head tilted back, looking up at the ceiling, and moving just enough to locate a cool part of the sheet. I didn’t sleep but I would play records on the record player at the foot of my bed, slow records, with no tune, just rhythm. I was smoking a lot. I thought I was being decadent and I liked the idea. But this game-playing wasn’t enough to delude me: I was sad and disoriented.

One afternoon the maid knocked at my door and informed me cryptically that ‘there was someone downstairs’. I immediately thought of Cyril and went down. But it wasn’t him, it was Elsa. She clasped my hands effusively. Looking at her, I was astonished at her newfound beauty. She finally had a tan, a smooth, pale tan, and she was very well groomed and radiating youthfulness.

‘I’ve come to get my cases,’ she said. ‘Juan bought me some dresses these last few days, but it wasn’t enough.’

I wondered for a moment who Juan was, and moved on. I was pleased to see Elsa again. She had about her the aura of a kept woman and of bars and convivial parties, which reminded me of happier days. I told her that I was glad to see her again and she assured me that we had always got on well together, since we had a lot in common. I concealed a slight shudder at this and suggested we should go up to my room, which would save her from running into my father and Anne. When I mentioned my father she could not repress a little nod of the head and it occurred to me that she perhaps still loved him – Juan and his dresses notwithstanding. It also occurred to me that, three weeks earlier, I would not have picked up on that nod.

In my room I listened to her talk in glowing terms of the sophisticated, exhilarating life that she had been leading on the Riviera. I was vaguely aware of some strange notions suggesting themselves to me, partly inspired by her new appearance. She finally stopped talking of her own accord, perhaps because of my silence, then walked about a bit and, without turning round, asked casually whether ‘Raymond was happy’. I had the impression that the ball was in my court and I immediately understood why. At that moment a lot of different plans got all muddled up in my head, various schemes formed, I felt myself sinking under the weight of my own arguments. But, just as quickly, I realized what I had to say to her.

‘“Happy”,’ I replied, ‘that’s saying a lot. Anne won’t let him believe otherwise. She’s very cunning.’

‘Very!’ sighed Elsa.

‘You’ll never guess what she’s persuaded him to do … She’s going to marry him.’

Elsa turned towards me with a horrified look.

‘Marry him? Raymond wants to get married, he of all people?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Raymond is getting married.’

A sudden desire to laugh caught me by the throat. My hands were shaking. Elsa seemed completely at a loss, as if I had dealt her a blow. She couldn’t be allowed to reflect on things and come to the conclusion that, after all, it was to do with his age and that he couldn’t spend his whole life with good-time girls. I leant forward and, to make more of an impression, suddenly dropped my voice.

‘It just mustn’t be allowed to happen, Elsa. He is suffering already. It’s just not possible, you understand that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

She seemed fascinated. It made me want to laugh, and my shaking got worse.

‘I’ve been waiting for you to come,’ I said. ‘You’re the only one who can contend with Anne. Only you have the necessary class.’

It was quite obvious that she wanted nothing more than to believe me.

‘But if he’s marrying her,’ she countered, ‘it’s because he loves her.’

‘Come on,’ I said softly, ‘it’s you he loves, Elsa. Don’t try to make me believe that you don’t know that.’

I saw her blink, and she turned away to hide her pleasure and the hope that I was giving out to her. I was acting in a sort of daze and I sensed exactly what I had to say.

‘She bamboozled him, you understand, with talk about the stability of marriage, and about family life and morality, and he got taken in by her.’

I was overcome by what I was saying, for I was actually expressing my own feelings, no doubt in a crude, elementary form, but it corresponded to what I believed.

‘If the wedding goes ahead, the lives of all three of us will be ruined, Elsa. My father must be protected, he’s just a big baby … a big baby …’

I repeated ‘a big baby’ very forcefully. It seemed to me to be verging rather too much on melodrama but already Elsa’s lovely green eyes were clouding over with pity. I finished up as if it were a hymn:

‘Help me, Elsa. I say this for your sake, for my father’s sake and for the sake of the love you have for each other.’

Inwardly I concluded: ‘And for the sake of anyone else you care to think of.’

‘But what can I do?’ asked Elsa. ‘The situation strikes me as being impossible.’

‘If you think it’s impossible, then just give up,’ I said, in what is known as a broken voice.

‘What a trollop!’ murmured Elsa.

‘That’s the very word for it,’ I said, and it was my turn to look away.

Elsa was being reborn before my very eyes. She had been made a fool of and she was going to show that scheming woman just what she, Elsa Mackenbourg, was capable of. And my father loved her, she had always known that. Even when she had been with Juan she hadn’t been able to forget Raymond’s charm. It’s true that she had never mentioned marriage to him, but at least she hadn’t bored him, she hadn’t tried to …

‘Elsa,’ I said, for I could endure her no longer, ‘go and see Cyril and ask him from me to put you up. He’ll sort it out with his mother. Tell him that I’ll come and see him tomorrow morning. We’ll all three of us discuss the situation then.’

At the door I added, as a joke: ‘It’s your destiny you’re fighting for, Elsa.’

She gravely assented, as if she didn’t have a dozen possible destinies, as many destinies as there were men who would keep her. I watched her as she tripped off lightly into the sun. I estimated that it would take my father a week to find her desirable again.