Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

‘Take off those pyjamas, you little fool, you’re going to crease them. How can you be cold on a night like this? Are you unwell?’

He took me in his arms, carefully removed my pyjamas and threw them in a ball on the floor. I pointed out to him that they would get creased after all. He began to laugh softly. All his movements had become incredibly gentle. He was quietly kissing my shoulders and my mouth, while continuing to speak.

‘You smell of warm grass. Do you like this room? If not, we can go somewhere else. It’s quite pleasant, Cannes …’

I was answering ‘Yes, yes’ in a strangled voice. I so much wanted it to be the next morning. It was only when he drew back from me a little and put his hand on my hip that I became carried away. He was stroking me and I was kissing his neck, his torso, everything that I could touch of that dark shadow, silhouetted against the sky through the French window. Finally he slid his legs between mine, I slid my hands over his back, we were sighing together. Then suddenly I no longer saw either him or the sky above Cannes. I was dying, I was going to die yet I was not dying, but I was swooning. Nothing else was of any importance, how could I not always have known that? When we separated, Luc opened his eyes and smiled at me. I fell asleep immediately, with my head on his arm.

Two

I had always been told that it was very difficult to live with someone. During the short time I spent with Luc I did think it was, although I didn’t really experience it as such. I thought it was difficult insofar as I was never able to be truly relaxed with him. I was afraid that he might be bored. I couldn’t help observing that, generally speaking, I was more afraid of being bored by others than of seeing them get bored by me, so to have things turned the other way round worried me. Yet how could I find it difficult to live with someone like Luc, who said very little, who asked me no questions (and especially not ‘What are you thinking about?’), who invariably seemed pleased that I was there and who made none of the demands associated with either insensitivity or passion? We lived in step, we had the same habits and the same rhythm. We found each other attractive, everything was going well. And I had no reason to regret his not having made the enormous effort required in order to love someone, in order really to know that person and to dispel their loneliness. We were friends and lovers. We swam together in a Mediterranean that was just too blue for words; we had lunch without saying much, dazed as we were by the sun, and we would go back to the hotel. Sometimes, in his arms, in that great aura of tenderness that follows love-making, I wanted to say to him: ‘Luc, love me, let’s try, allow us to try.’ But I did not say it. I confined myself to kissing his forehead, his eyes, his mouth, all the contours of that new face, that sensitive face that the lips discover after it has been discovered by the eyes. I had never loved a face so much. I even loved his cheeks, although cheeks had always appeared to me to be without much substance, the things that made a face look like a fish. Now when I pressed my face against Luc’s cheeks, which were cool and somewhat rough from the beard that was growing in, I understood why Proust speaks at such length of Albertine’s cheeks. 20Luc also helped me discover my own body, he talked to me about it with interest, but without any indecency, as if it were a precious thing. And yet it wasn’t sensuality that set the tone of our relationship, but something else, a sort of cruel complicity that came about because we were both weary of putting on an act, we were weary of words, we were simply weary.

After dinner we would always make our way to the same rather sinister bar behind Rue d’Antibes. There was a small band, and when we first went there, Luc had asked them to play the tune ‘Lone and Sweet’, which I had already mentioned to him. He had turned to me in triumph.

‘That’s the one you want, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. It’s good of you to have thought of it.’

‘Does it remind you of Bertrand?’

I replied that it did a bit, it had been in jukeboxes for quite a while. He looked put out.

‘That’s a nuisance. But we’ll find another one.’

‘Why?’

‘When you have an affair you have to choose a tune to go with it, that’s how it is, and a perfume, and landmarks, for the future.’

I must have taken on a rather peculiar look, because he began to laugh.

‘At your age you don’t think about the future. But I’m preparing for an enjoyable old age, with records to play.’

‘Have you a lot?’

‘No.’

‘That’s a shame,’ I said, feeling irked. ‘When I’m your age I imagine I’ll have a whole collection of them.’

He took my hand cautiously.

‘Are you offended?’

‘No,’ I said wearily. ‘But it’s rather strange to be saying to yourself that a whole week of your life, an exciting week that you’ve spent with someone, will be reduced in a year or two to nothing more than a record. Especially if the someone knows that already and proclaims it.’

To my annoyance I could feel tears in my eyes. It was the way he had said: ‘Are you offended?’ When people spoke to me in a certain tone it always made me want to wail.

‘Apart from that, I’m not offended,’ I went on shakily.

‘Come on,’ said Luc, ‘let’s dance.’

He took me in his arms and we began to dance to Bertrand’s tune, which in any case sounded nothing like the very good recording of it in the jukebox. As we danced, Luc all of a sudden clasped me in his arms fiercely with what no doubt could be called a despairing tenderness, and I clung on to him. Then he stopped holding me so tightly and we talked about other things. We found a tune that we could not but choose, since at the time it was being played everywhere.

Apart from that slight clash, I behaved well, I was very cheerful and I reckoned that our little escapade was a great success. And then, I admired him, I could not help admiring his intelligence and stability and his man’s way of according to things their exact importance, their weight, without being either cynical or complacent. Only, I wanted to say to him, sometimes with annoyance: ‘But, after all, why do you not love me? That would be so much more restful for me. Why not let there be passionate love between us, like a kind of glass partition which can sometimes distort things, yet which is so very convenient?’ But no, we were two of a kind, allies and accomplices. I could not reduce myself to being merely the object of his love, any more than he could force himself to love me: it was not within his power, he had neither the strength nor the wish to do so.

The week we had anticipated was coming to an end. However, Luc did not say anything about our leaving. We had become very tanned and had acquired a rather dishevelled look as a result of nights spent in the bar talking, drinking and waiting for dawn, a white dawn breaking over an unfeeling sea, all boats at rest, and with the crazy, elegant crowd of seagulls dozing under the eaves of the hotel. We would go back then, would greet the same drowsy bellboy and Luc would take me in his arms and we would make love, giddy with fatigue. We would wake up at noon and go for a swim.

On that particular morning, which was to have been our last, I really believed that he loved me. Walking about the room, he had taken on a hesitant look which intrigued me.

‘What have you said to your family? That you would go home when?’

‘I told them in about a week.’

‘If it suited you, perhaps we could stay on for another week?’

‘Yes …’

It was dawning on me that I had never really thought I would have to leave. My whole life would go by in that hotel, which had become so hospitable and accommodating, like a big ship. With Luc, all my nights would be sleepless nights. We would move gently towards winter, towards death, still talking as if everything were provisional.