Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Well, nothing much.’

I raised my hand dismissively. He caught it in mid-air; I looked at him, taken aback. Immediately, and for a split second, I thought: ‘I like him. He’s rather old and I like him.’ But he laid my hand back on the table, smiling:

‘Your fingers are all inky. That’s a good sign. You’re going to pass your exam and you’re going to be a brilliant lawyer, even though you don’t seem to be very talkative.’

I began to laugh along with him. I did so want to make a friend of him.

But Bertrand was back already and Luc was talking to him. I didn’t listen to what they were saying. Luc had a slow way of speaking and large hands. I said to myself: ‘He’s the archetypal seducer of little girls like me.’ I was on my guard already. Even so, I felt a little stab of displeasure when he invited us to lunch a couple of days from then, but with his wife.

Two

Before going to Luc’s for lunch I spent two rather boring days. What was there for me to do, really? I could work a bit for an exam that wouldn’t lead to much, I could sit around in the sun or I could be made love to by Bertrand, without much reciprocity on my part. Having said that, I did like Bertrand. As I saw it, trust, tenderness and respect were not things to be sniffed at, and I didn’t really think a lot about passion. It seemed to me perfectly normal to live your life without experiencing any genuine emotion. Living, essentially, meant seeing to it that you were as content as you could be. And even that wasn’t always so easy.

I was staying in a sort of family-run residence, inhabited exclusively by female students. The people in charge were broad-minded and I was quite easily able to come back in at one or two o’clock in the morning. My room was large, with a low ceiling, and completely bare, for my initial plans for decorating had very soon fallen by the wayside. I didn’t ask much of my surroundings, as long as they didn’t get in my way. The house had a provincial atmosphere which I really liked. My window looked out on a courtyard, enclosed by a low wall, and over it brooded the permanently circumscribed, polluted skies of Paris, skies you could sometimes glimpse receding into the distance above a street or a balcony in a gently touching way.

I would get up, go to classes, meet up with Bertrand and we would have lunch together. Then there was the library at the Sorbonne, there was work, there were cinemas, the terraces of cafés and friends. In the evening we would go dancing or instead we would go back to Bertrand’s place, where we would stretch out on his bed, make love and afterwards talk for a long time in the darkness. I was fine, and yet, inside of me, like some warm, living creature, there was always that hankering for languor, solitude and sometimes exaltation. I told myself that it was probably something to do with my digestion.

That Friday, before going to Luc’s for lunch, I called in to see Catherine and stayed for half an hour. Catherine was lively, bossy and permanently in love. I hadn’t chosen her friendship, it was something I was at the receiving end of. But she looked upon me as being fragile and defenceless, and I liked that. Indeed she often struck me as being quite marvellous. My indifference to things seemed to her to have something poetic about it, as it had for a long time seemed to Bertrand, before that sudden, insistent desire to possess me had taken hold of him.

On that particular day she was in love with a cousin and she recounted this romance to me at length. I told her that I was going to have lunch with some relatives of Bertrand’s and, as I spoke, I realized that I had rather forgotten about Luc and I was sorry that I had. Why did I not have one of those naïve and never-ending tales of love to recount to Catherine? It didn’t even surprise her that I hadn’t. We were already so rigidly set in our respective roles. She would talk and I would listen; she would advise and I would stop listening.

My visit to her depressed me. I went to Luc’s without much enthusiasm and even with some trepidation: I was going to have to chat, be friendly and project an image of myself to them. I would have preferred to have lunch on my own, twirl a jar of mustard round between my fingers, and be vague, vague, completely vague …

When I got to Luc’s, Bertrand was already there. He introduced me to his uncle’s wife. Her face had something radiant about it, and something very kind and lovely. She was tall, quite well-built and blonde. She was beautiful, in fact, but not in an intimidating way. It struck me that she was the type of woman that many men would like to have and to hold on to, one who would make them happy, a gentle kind of woman. Was I gentle? I would have to ask Bertrand. I certainly took his hand, I wasn’t loud, I stroked his hair. But I detested loudness and my hands loved the feel of his hair, which was warm and thick, like the fur of an animal.

Right from the start Françoise was very nice. She showed me round the flat, which was luxurious; she poured me a drink and she sat me down in an armchair, all in a relaxed, attentive way. The embarrassment I had felt regarding my rather worn-out, shapeless skirt and sweater faded. We were expecting Luc, who was working. I thought I ought perhaps to pretend to show some interest in Luc’s job, something it never occurred to me to do. I would have liked to ask people: ‘Are you in love?’ or ‘What are you reading?’ but I never wondered what their job was, although to them it was often of prime importance.

‘You seem anxious,’ remarked Françoise laughingly. ‘Would you like another drop of whisky?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Dominique already has a reputation for being a drunkard,’ said Bertrand. ‘Do you know why?’

He leapt to his feet and came over to me in a self-important manner.

‘She has a rather short upper lip, so that when she drinks with her eyes closed it gives her a fervid look that has nothing to do with Scotch.’

While speaking he had taken my upper lip between his thumb and forefinger. He was showing me to Françoise as if I were a puppy. I began to laugh and he let go of me just as Luc arrived.

When I saw him I said to myself once again, but this time experiencing a painful sensation when I did so, that he was very handsome. It really did cause me some hurt, as did everything that I could not have. I rarely felt the desire to have anything, but in that instance the thought came to me very quickly that I would have liked to take that face of his in my hands, grip it violently with my fingers and press that full, rather elongated mouth against mine. Yet Luc wasn’t handsome. People were often to say that to me subsequently. But there was something about his features that meant that his face, which I had seen only twice, was a thousand times less strange to me than Bertrand’s, a thousand times less strange and more desirable than Bertrand’s, which I nonetheless liked.

He came in, said hello to us and sat down. He could be amazingly still. I mean that there was something charged and restrained in the slow, casual way in which he gestured and moved that was disturbing. He looked at Françoise affectionately and I looked at him. I no longer remember what was said. Bertrand and Françoise did most of the talking. I am quite appalled, however, when I look back on those early stages. All I would have needed to do at that point to escape his attentions would have been to be a little cautious and a little distant. Now, on the contrary, I can’t wait to talk about the first time I was to be happy because of him. The very thought of describing those first moments, of trying briefly to overcome the inertness of mere words, fills me with a bitter, impatient joy.

So we had lunch with Luc and Françoise. Then, in the street, I immediately fell into step with Luc, who walked briskly, and I forgot to keep step with Bertrand. Luc took my elbow to guide me across the road and I remember finding that awkward. I didn’t know what to do with my forearm, nor with the hand that hung dejectedly at the end of it, as if, below where Luc’s hand was placed on it, my arm was dead. I couldn’t think what I did about this when I was with Bertrand. Later on, Luc and Françoise took us to an outfitter’s and bought me a coat in a reddish woollen material. I was so astonished that I didn’t know either how to refuse it or how to thank them. When Luc was on the scene things moved very quickly, they really speeded up. Afterwards, time seemed to lapse back with a bump and be once again measured out in minutes, hours and cigarettes.