Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

‘I’ve been very unpleasant,’ I said. ‘I’m going to apologize to Anne.’

‘You are … um … happy, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said lightly. ‘And then if we don’t get on too well with Anne, I shall just get married a bit sooner, that’s all.’

I knew he was bound to be hurt by that suggestion.

‘That’s not anything we want to consider. You’re not Snow White. 12Could you bear to leave me so soon? We would only have had two years together.’

The idea was as unbearable to me as it was to him. I could easily have seen myself there and then weeping on his shoulder and talking about lost happiness and high-flown emotions. But I could not make him party to my plans.

‘I’m really exaggerating, you know. Anne and I get on well, in fact. And with allowances on both sides …’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said.

He must have been thinking, as I was, that the allowances were unlikely to be reciprocal but would be made by me alone.

‘You understand,’ I said. ‘I am well aware that Anne is always right. Her life is much more of a success than ours, much more meaningful …’

He made as if to protest in spite of himself, but I carried on.

‘In a month or two I’ll have taken Anne’s ideas completely on board, there’ll be no more silly arguments between us. It just needs a little patience.’

He was looking at me, clearly baffled. And he was also fearful. He was losing an accomplice for his future escapades and he was also losing a bit of his past.

‘You mustn’t exaggerate,’ he said feebly. ‘I admit that the kind of life you’ve led with me was perhaps not suitable for your age, nor … um … for mine either, but it wasn’t a foolish or unhappy life, it really wasn’t. Basically we haven’t been too … um … miserable, we really haven’t, or out of kilter, these last two years. We don’t have to disown our way of life just like that, merely because Anne looks at things rather differently.’

‘We don’t have to disown it,’ I said with conviction, ‘but we do have to abandon it.’

‘So it seems,’ said the poor man, and with that we went downstairs.

I made my apologies to Anne without any trouble. She said that they were unnecessary and that the heat must have been to blame for our argument. I felt indifferent towards her, and perfectly cheerful.

I met up with Cyril in the wood as arranged. I told him what he had to do. He listened to me with a mixture of fear and admiration. Then he took me in his arms, but it was too late, I had to go back. I was surprised at how hard it was for me to part from him. If he had been seeking a means of binding me to him, he had certainly found it. My body responded to him, became fully itself and blossomed when close to his. I kissed him passionately, I wanted to hurt him, to leave my mark on him so that he would not be able to forget me for one instant that evening and would dream of me that night. For the night would be endless without him, without him close to me, without his lover’s skill, his sudden passion and his long caresses.

Six

The next morning I took my father on a walk with me along the road. We talked cheerfully of trivial things. As we headed back towards the villa, I suggested to him that we might go through the pine wood. It was exactly half past ten; I was on time. My father walked ahead of me: the path was narrow and covered in brambles which he pushed aside for me as we went, so that I wouldn’t scratch my legs. When I saw him come to a sudden halt, I knew that he had seen them. I went up to him. Cyril and Elsa were asleep, lying stretched out on the pine needles, giving every appearance of bucolic bliss. It was just what I had told them to do, but when I saw them like that I felt heartbroken. Elsa’s love for my father and Cyril’s love for me could not stop them from being each as beautiful and young as the other, or now so close together. I glanced over at my father: he stood motionless, gazing at them as if mesmerized and looking abnormally pale. I took him by the arm.

‘Don’t let’s waken them, let’s go.’

He cast a last glance at Elsa lying back in all her youthful beauty, all gold-skinned and red-haired, and with a slight smile playing on her lips, the smile of the young nymph who has at last been overtaken. Turning on his heel, he began to stride away.

‘The trollop,’ he was muttering, ‘the trollop!’

‘Why do you say that? Isn’t she free to do as she pleases?’

‘That’s not the point. Do you like it, seeing Cyril in her arms?’

‘I don’t love him any more,’ I said.

‘And I don’t love Elsa either,’ he cried out furiously. ‘But it does something to me, even so. After all, I’ve – er – lived with her! That makes it much worse …’

I knew that made it worse! He must have felt the same urge as I had, to rush forward, to part them, to reclaim what was, or had once been, his.

‘If Anne could hear you now …’

‘What? If Anne could hear me? Obviously she wouldn’t understand or she’d be shocked, that’s only natural. But what about you? You’re my daughter, aren’t you? Don’t you understand me any more? Are you shocked too?’

How easy it was for me to steer his thoughts! I was rather alarmed at knowing him so well.

‘I’m not shocked,’ I said. ‘But you’ve got to face up to things. Elsa has a short memory, she likes Cyril, she’s lost to you. Especially after what you did to her. People don’t forgive things like that.’

‘If I wanted to …’ my father began, and then stopped as if afraid to go on.

‘You wouldn’t succeed,’ I said emphatically, as if it were quite natural to be discussing his chances of getting Elsa back.

‘But I’m not thinking of it,’ he said, coming to his senses.

‘Of course not,’ I said with a shrug of the shoulders.

The shrug meant: ‘Impossible, dear chap, you’re out of the running.’ He said nothing further to me on the way back to the house. When he got there he took Anne in his arms and held her close for a few moments with his eyes closed. Smiling and surprised, she made no objection. I left the room and went to lean against the wall in the hallway, trembling with shame.

At two o’clock I heard Cyril’s faint whistle and I went down to the beach. He made me get into the boat straight away and headed out to sea. There were no other boats, no one was thinking of going out in that sun. Once we were on the open sea he lowered the sail and turned to face me. We had hardly said a word.

‘About this morning …’ he began.

‘Be quiet,’ I said, ‘oh, do be quiet …’

He gently pushed me down on to the tarpaulin. We were soaked, running with sweat; we were clumsy and in a hurry. The boat swayed rhythmically beneath us. I lay looking at the sun just above me. And suddenly I heard Cyril’s whispering, masterful yet tender. The sun was becoming detached from the sky. It was bursting open and falling on me. Where was I? It was as if I were at the bottom of the ocean, I was lost in time, I was in extremes of pleasure … I cried out to Cyril but he made no reply – there was no need.

Then came the coolness of the salt water. We were laughing together, dazzled, languid, grateful. We had sun and sea, laughter and love. Would we ever experience them again as we did that summer, with all the vividness and intensity lent to them by fear and remorse?

As well as the very real physical pleasure that I got from love, I also experienced a kind of intellectual pleasure from thinking about it. The expression ‘to make love’ has an attraction all of its own which, if you analyse it, springs from the meaning of the individual words. I was charmed by the fact that the verb ‘to make’, with its clear-cut, material connotations, was associated with the poetic abstraction of the word ‘love’. I had used the phrase before quite unblushingly, without the least embarrassment and without noticing how it could be savoured. Now I felt that I was becoming easily embarrassed. I would lower my gaze whenever my father looked at all intently at Anne, whenever she laughed that new, little, husky and unseemly laugh of hers, which made both my father and me turn pale and stare out of the window. If we had told Anne that her laugh was like that, she would not have believed us. She did not behave as if she were my father’s mistress but, rather, as if she were a dear friend. Yet at night, no doubt … I refused to entertain such thoughts, I hated notions that unsettled me.