Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

He turned to Anne:

‘That girl is extraordinary! She must have got that poor boy in her clutches and got herself adopted by the old lady.’

But Anne wasn’t listening to him. She was watching me. I saw that and I buried my face in the sand, full of shame. She stretched out her hand and laid it on my neck.

‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘Do you resent me for this?’

I opened my eyes. She was gazing down at me anxiously, almost imploringly. For the first time she was looking at me as if I were a person with thoughts and feelings and she was doing so the very day that … I groaned and brusquely turned my head towards my father to shake off that hand. He was watching the boat.

‘My poor little girl,’ Anne’s voice went on quietly. ‘My poor little Cécile. It’s my fault in a way. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so strict. Do you believe me when I say that I didn’t wish to cause you distress?’

She was gently stroking my hair and the back of my neck. I didn’t move. I had the same impression as I did when, on the beach, the sand disappeared from beneath my feet, sucked away by a receding wave. A longing for defeat and gentleness had overcome me and no other feeling, not anger, not desire, had ever swept me up as this one did. I wanted to abandon the play-acting, to entrust my life to her, to put myself in her hands for the rest of my days. I had never before experienced such an intense and overwhelming sense of helplessness. I closed my eyes. It seemed to me as if my heart were ceasing to beat.

Four

My father had displayed no emotion other than astonishment. The maid had explained to him that Elsa had come to fetch her suitcase and had left again immediately. I don’t know why she didn’t mention our conversation to him. She was a local woman with a very romantic outlook on life and she must have thought our situation quite spicy, especially with the changes to the bedroom arrangements that she had had to deal with.

Anyway, my father and Anne, being racked with remorse, showed me every consideration and a kindness which, although at first it was unbearable, I quickly learnt to appreciate. The fact was that, even though it was all my doing, I did not find it very pleasant to be always running into Cyril and Elsa arm in arm, showing every sign of being in perfect harmony. I could no longer go sailing but I could see Elsa sailing past with her hair all wind-swept, as mine had been. I had no difficulty in assuming an impassive and deceptively detached expression when we met them. For we met them everywhere, in the wood, in the village, on the road. Anne would glance at me and talk to me about something else. She would put her hand on my shoulder to comfort me. Have I said that she was kind? I don’t know whether her kindness was a refined expression of her intelligence or quite simply of her aloofness but she always had the right word or gesture, and if there had been any real suffering involved, I could not have had better support.

So I let myself drift on without too much concern, for, as I’ve said, my father was showing no sign of jealousy. That was proof to me of his attachment to Anne and it annoyed me somewhat because it also showed up the futility of my plans. One day we were going to the post office, he and I, when we passed Elsa. She appeared not to see us and my father turned round to look at her, giving a little whistle, as if she were someone he didn’t know.

‘I say, she’s got terribly attractive-looking, has Elsa.’

‘Love suits her,’ I said.

He looked at me in surprise.

‘You seem to be taking that better than before …’

‘What do you expect?’ I said. ‘They’re the same age so it was more or less inevitable.’

‘If it hadn’t been for Anne, it wouldn’t have been at all inevitable.’

He was furious.

‘Don’t imagine that some cheeky young devil could take a woman away from me if I didn’t consent to it.’

‘Age does come into it,’ I said solemnly.

He shrugged his shoulders. When we got back I saw that he was preoccupied. Perhaps he was thinking that, yes, Elsa was young and so was Cyril, and that marrying a woman of his own age meant that he would no longer fall into the category of men who were ageless. I couldn’t help feeling triumphant. When I saw the little wrinkles in the corners of Anne’s eyes and the slight creasing round her mouth I did feel angry with myself. But it was so easy to follow my impulses and to repent later …

A week went by. Cyril and Elsa, who did not know how matters were progressing, must have been expecting me every day. But I didn’t dare go to see them. They would have forced me to come up with more ideas and I wasn’t keen on that. In any case, in the afternoons I was going up to my room, supposedly to work. In point of fact, I was doing nothing. I had found a book on yoga and I was getting down to that with great conviction, sometimes succumbing to the most awful fits of giggles, but silently, because I was afraid that Anne might hear. In fact I told her that I was working very hard. I pretended for her benefit to be disappointed in love and to be finding consolation in the thought of one day becoming an accomplished graduate. I got the impression that she thought well of me for that and I took to quoting Kant 10at mealtimes, which quite clearly dismayed my father.

One afternoon I had swathed myself in bath towels in order to achieve a more Hindu look. I had placed my right foot on my left thigh and I was staring at myself in the mirror, not in a self-satisfied way but in the hope of attaining the higher state of the Yogi, when there was a knock at the door. I assumed it was the maid and, as nothing ever alarmed her, I called to her to come in.

It was Anne. She stood stock-still for a moment in the doorway and then she smiled.

‘What do you think you’re playing at?’

‘At yoga,’ I said. ‘But I’m not playing. It’s a Hindu philosophy.’

She went over to the table and picked up my book. I began to get alarmed. It was open at page one hundred and the other pages were covered with notes in my handwriting, such as ‘can’t be done’ or ‘exhausting’.

‘You are very conscientious,’ she said. ‘And what has become of this great essay on Pascal 11that you’ve talked to us about so much?’

It was true that I had enjoyed holding forth at mealtimes on something Pascal says that I pretended to have thought about and worked on. I hadn’t written a word, of course. I stayed perfectly still. Anne looked at me intently and the truth suddenly dawned on her.

‘It’s your own business if you don’t work and if you play the fool in front of the mirror,’ she said. ‘But if you then take delight in lying to your father and me, that’s more serious. I must say, your sudden burst of intellectual activity did surprise me …’

She made her exit, leaving me petrified in my bath towels. I didn’t understand her reference to ‘lies’. I had talked about essays to please her, yet out of the blue she was heaping scorn on me. I had become accustomed to her new attitude towards me, and now the calm, humiliating nature of her disdain filled me with rage. I got out of my attire, pulled on trousers and an old blouse and rushed from the house. The heat was overpowering but I began to run, propelled by a kind of fury that was all the more violent for my suspecting that I was ashamed. I ran all the way to Cyril’s and I stopped, breathless, at the entrance to his villa. In the afternoon heat the houses seemed strangely deep, silent and turned in on their secrets. I went up to Cyril’s bedroom, which he had shown me the day we had gone to see his mother. I opened the door. He was asleep, stretched out across his bed with his cheek resting on his arm. I stood looking at him for a full minute. For the first time ever he appeared defenceless to me, a touching sight. I called out to him in a low voice. He opened his eyes and, on seeing me, sat up immediately.