Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

‘She’s fine,’ I said. ‘She …’

I stopped short because Luc had put on the tune they’d been playing on the Côte d’Azur and everything had suddenly come flooding back to me. He had not turned round. For a moment I found my thoughts in a whirl, what with the couple, the music, Françoise’s seeming to turn a blind eye, Luc’s similarly feigned sentimentality – in a word, the whole combination. I felt a powerful urge to run from the place.

‘I really like that tune,’ said Luc placidly.

He sat down and I realized that he had been thinking of nothing in particular, not even of our acerbic conversation about records as memories. The tune must simply have come back to him once or twice and he had bought the record to get it out of his system.

‘I like it very much too,’ I said.

He looked up in my direction, remembered and smiled at me. He smiled with such obvious tenderness that I lowered my eyes. But Françoise was lighting a cigarette. I was at a loss. You couldn’t even have said that there was a pretence going on, for it seemed to me that the situation would have needed only to be mentioned for each of us calmly and objectively to have given our opinion of it, as if we were not personally implicated.

‘Are we going to see this play or not?’ said Luc.

He turned to me to explain.

‘We’ve had an invitation to a new play. We could all three of us go …’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

I almost added, with an incipient giggle: ‘Considering everything else!’

Françoise took me into her bedroom to try on one of her coats, which was more stylish than mine. She got me to put on one or two, made me turn round, stood the collars up. At one moment, while doing so, she held my face between the two lapels of the collar and I thought, stifling the same laughter: ‘I’m at her mercy. Perhaps she is going to suffocate me or bite me.’ But she merely smiled.

‘You’re drowning a bit in this.’

‘That’s true,’ I said, not thinking of the coat.

‘I really must see you when you come back.’

‘That’s it,’ I thought. ‘Is she going to ask me to stop seeing Luc? Will I be able to?’ And the answer came to me straight away: ‘No. I couldn’t do it.’

‘Because I’ve decided to take you in hand and dress you suitably and introduce you to things that are more fun than those students and libraries.’

‘Oh, goodness,’ I thought, ‘this is not the moment, it’s not the moment to be saying that to me.’

‘Should I not?’ she went on, in response to my silence. ‘I rather felt I had a daughter in you.’ (She laughed as she said that, but in a kindly way.) ‘If that daughter is going to be rebellious and purely interested in intellectual things …’

‘You are too kind,’ I said, stressing the word ‘too’. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Just let yourself be done to,’ she said, laughing again.

‘I’ve really landed myself in it,’ I thought. ‘But if Françoise is fond of me and if she really wants to see me, I shall get to see Luc more often. Perhaps I’ll tell her. Perhaps it’s really all the same to her, after ten years of marriage.’

‘Why are you so fond of me?’ I asked.

‘You have the same nature as Luc. You have both rather unhappy natures and your fate is to be consoled by creatures from Venus like me. There’s no escape for you …’

Mentally I threw my up my hands in horror. Then we went to the theatre. Luc laughed and talked. Françoise explained to me who the various people were, who they were with and so on. Afterwards they dropped me back at my residence and Luc kissed the palm of my hand in a quite natural way. I went in feeling rather dazed, fell asleep and the next morning caught the train to the Yonne.

Two

But the Yonne was grey and the tedium was unbearable. It wasn’t so much tedium as the tediousness of missing someone. I left after a week. As I was leaving, my mother suddenly came to and asked me if I was happy. I assured her that I was, that I really liked studying law, that I was working hard and that I had some good friends. Reassured, she sank back into her melancholy. Not for one moment did I have any desire to confide in her, which is certainly what would have happened the year before. In any case, what would I have told her? I was definitely growing up.

At the residence I found a note from Bertrand asking me to phone him as soon as I got back. There was no doubt at all that he was looking for an explanation from me – for I didn’t believe much in Catherine’s discretion – but I did owe him that. So I phoned him and we arranged to meet. In the meantime I went to register at the university restaurant. 27

At six o’clock I met Bertrand in the café in Rue Saint-Jacques and it was as if nothing had happened and everything was starting up again from where we had left off. But as soon as he stood up and kissed me gravely on the cheek, I was brought back to reality. Like a coward, I tried to adopt a light, irresponsible manner.

‘You’ve got better-looking,’ I said, with genuine sincerity and, deep down, with a cynical little thought: ‘A pity.’

‘So have you,’ he said curtly. ‘I wanted you to know: Catherine has told me everything.’

‘What’s everything?’

‘About your trip to the Côte d’Azur. I made one or two enquiries that led me to the conclusion that it was with Luc. That’s true, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. (I was impressed. Instead of looking furious, he just seemed calm and rather sad.)

‘Well, here’s how it is: I’m not the kind of guy who would be happy to share. I still love you; I love you enough to discount what has happened, but not enough to wallow in jealousy and to suffer because of you, as I did in the spring. You’ll just have to choose.’

He had said it all in one breath.

‘Choose what?’ I was annoyed. Just as Luc had foreseen, I hadn’t thought of Bertrand as being part of the problem.

‘Either you stop seeing Luc and we carry on as before, or you see him and we just stay good friends. That’s all.’

‘Of course, of course.’

I could think of absolutely nothing to say. He seemed more mature and serious; I almost admired him. But he no longer meant anything to me, he meant nothing at all. I laid my hand on his hand.

‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘but I can’t do it.’

He remained silent for a moment, looking out of the window.

‘It’s a bit hard to take,’ he said.

‘I don’t like making you suffer,’ I went on, and I felt utterly miserable.

‘That’s not the most difficult part,’ he said, as if he were talking to himself. ‘You’ll see. Once the decision has been made, it’s fine. The difficulty is when one clings on.’

He turned to me abruptly.

‘Do you love him?’

‘No, I don’t,’ I said, irritated. ‘There’s no question of it. We get on very well together, that’s all.’

‘If you ever have any problem, I’m here,’ he said. ‘And I do think you will have. You’ll see: there’s nothing to Luc, he’s just a very intelligent person with a sad streak. That’s all.’

I thought with a surge of joy of Luc’s tenderness and his laughter.

‘Believe me. In any case,’ he added with a kind of fervour, ‘I’ll always be there for you, you know that, Dominique. I’ve been very happy with you.’

We were both on the verge of tears, he because it was over and because, all the same, he must have hoped it would not be so, and I because it seemed as if I were losing my natural protector in order to throw myself into some bewildering adventure. I stood up and kissed him lightly.

‘Goodbye, Bertrand. Forgive me.’

‘Just go,’ he said gently.