Françoise Sagan - Bonjour Tristesse and a Certain Smile

One afternoon we went to tea with Cyril’s mother. She was a placid, smiling old lady who talked to us about the difficulties she had experienced as a widow and a mother. My father commiserated with her, looked across to Anne to indicate that he recognized what was being described and complimented the lady profusely. I must say he was always confident of being able to put his time to good use. Anne gazed upon the spectacle with an amiable smile. On our return she declared the lady to be charming. I burst out in imprecations against old ladies of that type. They each bestowed an indulgent, amused smile on me, which made me furious.

‘You don’t realize how pleased with herself she is,’ I cried. ‘She congratulates herself on the life she has had because she feels she has done her duty and …’

‘But it’s true,’ said Anne. ‘She has fulfilled her duties as a wife and mother, as the saying goes …’

‘And what about her duty as a whore?’ I said.

‘I dislike coarseness,’ said Anne, ‘even when it’s meant to be clever.’

‘But it’s not meant to be clever. She got married just as everyone gets married, either because they want to or because it’s the done thing. She had a child. Do you know how children come about?’

‘I’m probably less well informed than you,’ said Anne sarcastically, ‘but I do have some idea.’

‘So she brought the child up. She probably spared herself the anguish and upheaval of committing adultery. She has led the life of thousands of other women and she thinks that’s something to be proud of, you understand. She found herself in the position of being a young middle-class wife and mother and she did nothing to get out of that situation. She pats herself on the back for not having done this or that, rather than for actually having accomplished something.’

‘What you’re saying doesn’t make much sense,’ said my father.

‘You get lured into it,’ I cried. ‘Later on you can say to yourself “I’ve done my duty” but only because you’ve done nothing at all. If, with her background, she had become a street-walker, then she would have deserved some credit.’

‘Your ideas may be fashionable, 5but they’re worthless,’ said Anne.

That was perhaps true. I believed what I was saying but it was true that I had heard other people say those things. Even so, the life my father and I led tended to support the theory and, in casting scorn on it, Anne was being hurtful to me. One can be just as much attached to frivolity as to anything else. But Anne did not consider me to be a creature capable of thought. All at once it seemed urgent, indeed essential, to disabuse her. I did not think that the opportunity would present itself to me so soon, nor that I would know how to grasp it. Anyhow, I was the first to admit that in a month’s time I would have a different opinion on any given subject and that my convictions would not last. I could hardly be said to have high ideals.

Five

And then one day things came to a head. One morning my father decided that we were going to spend the evening in Cannes, gaming and dancing. I remember how pleased Elsa was. In the familiar atmosphere of casinos she expected to rediscover her identity as a femme fatale , which had become somewhat diminished by the sunburn and by the semi-isolation in which we lived. Contrary to my expectations, Anne put up no objection to these worldly pleasures; she even seemed quite pleased at the prospect. So it was without any sense of unease that, once dinner was over, I went up to my room to put on an evening dress – the only one that I possessed, in fact. My father had chosen it for me. It was made of some exotic material, probably rather too exotic for me, because my father, whether from inclination or habit, liked to dress me up as a femme fatale . I found him downstairs, resplendent in a new dinner jacket, and I put my arms around his neck.

‘You are the most handsome man I know!’

‘Apart from Cyril,’ he countered, without really believing what he said. ‘And you’re the prettiest girl that I know.’

‘After Elsa and Anne,’ I said, without believing it myself.

‘Since they’re not down yet and have taken the liberty of making us wait, come and dance with your rheumaticky old father.’

I felt again the elation I always experienced before we went out places together. There was really nothing of the ageing father about him. As we danced I breathed in that familiar smell of his, made up of eau de cologne, warmth and tobacco. He danced in time, with his eyes half-closed and with a happy little smile, as irrepressible as my own, playing at the corners of his lips.

‘You’ll have to teach me to bebop,’ 6he said, forgetting his rheumatism.

He stopped dancing in order to acknowledge the arrival of Elsa with an automatically murmured compliment. She was coming slowly down the stairs, wearing her green dress and the knowing smile of a woman of the world, the smile she wore for going to casinos. She had, to her credit, done the best she could with her dried-out hair and sunburnt skin but the result was not brilliant. Fortunately she did not seem to realize this.

‘Shall we go?’

‘Anne’s not here,’ I said.

‘Go upstairs and see if she’s ready,’ said my father. ‘It will be midnight at this rate by the time we get to Cannes.’

I went up the stairs, getting entangled in my dress, and knocked on Anne’s door. She called to me to come in but I stopped on the threshold. The dress she was wearing was grey but it was the most amazing grey, almost white, and the light clung to it with the kind of iridescence that the sea takes on at dawn. She seemed, that evening, to combine together everything that was attractive about maturity.

‘You look magnificent!’ I said. ‘Oh Anne, what a dress!’

She smiled at herself in the mirror, in the way you smile at someone you are about to leave.

‘This grey is a complete success,’ she said.

‘ You are a complete success,’ I said.

She took hold of my ear and looked at me. She had dark blue eyes. I saw them light up in a smile.

‘You’re a nice little girl,’ she said, ‘even though you can sometimes be tiresome.’

She left the room ahead of me without paying any attention to my own dress, which I was glad about and yet mortified by at the same time. As she descended the stairs ahead of me, I saw my father come to meet her. He stopped at the bottom of the staircase with his foot on the first step and his face raised in her direction. Elsa too was watching her come downstairs. I recall the scene exactly. Immediately in front of me I was looking at Anne’s golden neck and perfect shoulders. A little lower down stood my father with a dazzled expression on his face and with his hand outstretched. And already fading into the distance was the silhouette of Elsa.

‘Anne,’ said my father, ‘you are amazing!’

She smiled at him briefly and picked up her coat.

‘We’ll meet up once we’re there,’ she said. ‘Cécile, are you coming with me?’

She let me drive. The road at night was so beautiful that I drove slowly. Anne did not speak. She did not even seem to notice the trumpets blaring away on the radio. When my father’s convertible overtook us on a bend she did not raise an eyebrow. I felt that I was already a mere onlooker to a performance in which I could no longer play any part.

At the casino, thanks to my father’s manoeuvrings, we soon got split up. I found myself at the bar with Elsa and someone she knew, a tipsy South American. He was involved in theatre and, in spite of being in a state of inebriation, was still interesting for the passion he brought to it. I spent nearly an hour with him, most agreeably, but Elsa was bored. She knew one or two of the big names but was not interested in theatrical technique. All of a sudden she asked me where my father was, as if I might have had some idea, and then she went off. That seemed to make the South American sad for a moment but another whisky got him going again. My mind was nowhere, I was in a state of complete euphoria, having, out of politeness, joined him in his libations. Things got funnier still when he wanted to dance. I had to hold him round the waist and get my feet out from under his, all of which required a lot of energy. We were laughing so much that, when Elsa tapped me on the shoulder and I saw her look of foreboding, I nearly told her to go to hell.