Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

‘Is it you? Why are you here?’

I signalled to him not to speak so loud. If his mother were to come and find me in her son’s room, she might think … and who wouldn’t think …? Panic seized me and I made for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ cried Cyril. ‘Come back, Cécile!’

He had caught me by the arm and was laughingly holding me back. I turned towards him and looked at him. He went pale, as I myself must have been pale, and he let go of my wrist, but only to take me in his arms and carry me along with him. In my confusion I kept thinking that this had been bound to happen. And then began love’s merry dance, where fear goes hand in hand with desire and where, too, there is tenderness and rage and then that brutal hurt giving way to the triumph of pleasure. With Cyril’s gentleness playing its part, I had the good fortune to discover it that day.

I stayed close to him for an hour, dazed and amazed. I had always heard love being spoken of as something quite straightforward. I had myself spoken of it crudely, with the ignorance of youth, but it seemed to me now that I would never again be able to speak of it in that way, in that detached and coarse manner. Cyril, lying beside me, was talking about marrying me and having me next to him for as long as he lived. My silence worried him. I sat up and looked at him and called him ‘my lover’. He leant forward. I pressed my mouth on the vein that was still throbbing in his neck, murmuring ‘My darling Cyril, my darling’. I don’t know if it was true love that I felt for him at that moment – I have always been fickle and I don’t believe in seeing myself as anything other than what I am – but at that moment I loved him more than I loved myself, I would have given my life for him. He asked me as I was leaving if I felt reproachful towards him, which made me laugh. How could I feel reproachful towards him for giving me such happiness?

I made my way slowly back through the pines, exhausted and numbed. I had asked Cyril not to come with me, it would have been too dangerous. I was afraid that the blatant hallmarks of pleasure might be legible on my face, in the shadows under my eyes and the fullness of my lips, and in my trembling. Anne was on a recliner in front of the house, reading. I had a good story ready to explain my absence but she asked me no questions, she never asked me any questions. So I sat down near her without saying anything, remembering that we had fallen out. I stayed motionless, with my eyes half-closed, attentive to the rhythm of my breathing and the quivering of my fingers. From time to time the memory of Cyril’s body as it had been at certain moments left me feeling drained.

I took a cigarette from the table and struck a match on the matchbox. It went out. I lit a second one carefully, for there was no wind and the only thing quivering was my hand. It went out as soon as it touched my cigarette. I groaned and took a third one. And then, I don’t know why, that match became of vital importance to me. Perhaps it was because Anne, suddenly no longer aloof, was watching me intently and with no hint of a smile. At that moment, time and our surroundings vanished and all that remained was the match with my finger on it, the grey matchbox and Anne’s gaze. My mind went into a spin and my heart began to beat furiously; I tightened my fingers round the match, it flared and while I was eagerly bending my face towards it, my cigarette caught the tip of it and put it out. I let the box fall to the ground and closed my eyes. Anne’s harsh, interrogating gaze was bearing down on me. All that I prayed for, and from whatever quarter, was that the waiting should be over. Anne took my face in her hands while I kept my eyelids tight shut for fear she might see the look in my eyes. I could feel tears oozing out, tears of exhaustion, embarrassment and pleasure. At that point, as if she were forgoing any attempt to question me, in a gesture of appeasement which seemed to convey that she suspected nothing, Anne ran her hands down my face and released me. Then she put a lighted cigarette into my mouth and immersed herself in her book again.

I have imposed a certain meaning on that gesture of hers, or I have tried to. But today, whenever I need a match, I come back to that strange moment and to the gap between myself and what I was trying to do, to Anne’s gaze weighing on me and to that emptiness all around, the intensity of the void …

Five

The incident that I have just described was to have its consequences. Like all those who react to things in a very considered way and are very sure of themselves, Anne could not bear to compromise over her principles. That gesture of hers, the gentle way in which she had released her firm hands from around my face, was for her just such a compromise. She had guessed something that she could have made me confess to, and at the last minute she had given in to pity or retreated into aloofness. For it was just as hard for her to take charge of me and knock me into shape as it was for her to accept my shortcomings. It was her sense of duty that prompted her to assume the role of guardian and teacher. In marrying my father she was at the same time becoming responsible for me. I would have preferred her constant disapproval, if I may call it that, to have been the result of her irritation or of some other feeling that went only skin-deep, because in that case habit would quickly have got the better of it. People get used to the faults of others when they don’t believe it is their duty to correct them. Within six months she would no longer have felt anything but weariness where I was concerned, an affectionate weariness. That is exactly what I would have wanted. But she wasn’t going to feel that way, because she would see herself as being responsible for me, and in a sense she would indeed be responsible for me, since fundamentally I was still pliable – pliable yet headstrong.

So she was annoyed with herself and she let me know it. A few days later at lunch, and still on the topic of the holiday revision that I found so intolerable, an argument erupted. I was rather too outspoken, even my father took offence at it, and in the end Anne locked me in my room, all without having raised her voice. I was unaware of what she had done and, feeling thirsty, I went over to the door and made to open it. When it wouldn’t open I realized it was locked. I had never been locked up before in my life and I was genuinely panic-stricken. I rushed to the window but there was no getting out that way. I turned back, truly horrified, and threw myself against the door, hurting my shoulder very badly in the process. I tried to force the lock, clenching my teeth, as I didn’t want to call for anyone to come and open up for me. I sacrificed my nail clippers in the attempt. So there I was, standing in the middle of the room with nothing to show for my pains. I stood perfectly still, conscious of a sense of peace and tranquillity coming over me as my thoughts became clearer. It was my introduction to cruelty: the idea of it took root in me and became stronger the more I thought. I lay down on my bed and carefully drew up a plan. My ferocity was so much out of proportion to what had given rise to it that I got up two or three times in the course of the afternoon to leave the room and was each time astonished to come up against the locked door.

At six o’clock my father came to open up for me. I got up automatically when he entered the room. He looked at me without a word and I smiled at him in the same automatic way.

‘Do you want us to have a talk?’ he asked.

‘What about?’ I said. ‘You hate that kind of thing and so do I, that way of having things out that leads nowhere …’

‘That’s true.’ He seemed relieved. ‘You must be nice to Anne, you must be patient.’

That word surprised me: me , patient with Anne? He was standing the problem on its head. The fact was that he thought of Anne as a woman he was imposing on his daughter, rather than the other way round. There was all still to play for.