“The worst thing you did,” I said, “was to let me lull myself in a sense of false security. Here I am at forty-four, empty-handed, with no occupation, no other interest in life apart from you. If you had warned me eight years ago I should have made an independent existence for myself and now it would be easier for me to accept the situation.”

“But, Monique!” he cried, looking astonished. “I urged you as strongly as I possibly could to take that job as secretary of the Revue médicale seven years ago. It was right up your street and you could have reached a worthwhile position. You wouldn’t!”

The suggestion had seemed to me so untimely that I had almost entirely forgotten it. “I couldn’t see any point in spending the day away from the house and the children just for a hundred thousand francs a month,” I said.

“That was your answer then. I pressed you very hard.”

“If you had told me your real reasons—if you had told me I no longer meant everything to you and that I too should stand off a little myself, I should have accepted it.”

“I suggested your getting a job again when we were at Mougins. And again you refused.”

“At that time your love was enough for me.”

“It is not too late,” he said. “I can easily find you something to do.”

“Do you suppose that that would console me? Eight years ago I might have thought it less ludicrous—I should have had more chance of getting somewhere. But now.…”

“Still, you don’t love me as you did before; you’re fond of me, yes; but it’s no longer love as we knew it in our twenties.”

“It’s no longer the love of our twenties for you, either. When I was twenty I was in love with love at the same time that I was in love with you. I have lost the whole of that glowing, enthusiastic side of myself: that is what has changed.”

It was delightful talking with him, like two friends, as we used to do. Difficulties grew smaller; questions wafted away like smoke; events faded; true and false merged in a iridescence of converging shades. Fundamentally, nothing had happened. I ended up by believing that Noëllie did not exist.… Illusion: sleight of hand. In fact this comfortable talk has not changed anything in the very least. Things have been given other names: they have not altered in any way. I have learned nothing. The past remains as obscure as ever. The future as uncertain.

He argued with me, he pressed me, he looked wretched. He is used to my sadness of every day, but to deprive me of skiing—that crams him with remorse. (I am unfair: he is not used to it—he drips with guilty conscience, he takes pills to go to sleep, he looks like death warmed up. I am not touched by that; indeed I even rather resent it. If he tortures me, knowing what he is at and torturing himself at the same time, then he must be disgustingly fond of Noëllie.) We argued for a long while. I did not give way. In the end he looked so exhausted—drawn face, rings under his eyes—that I sent him to bed. He sank down into sleep as though into a refuge of peace.

I watch the drops of water running down the window-pane—a moment ago the rain was beating upon it. They don’t go down straight: they are like little creatures that for mysterious reasons of their own slant off to the right or the left, slipping between other motionles drops, stopping and then starting again as though they were in quest of something. It seems to me that I no longer have anything whatever to do. I always used to be busy. Now everything—knitting, cooking, reading, putting on a record—everything seems pointless. Maurice’s love gave every moment of my life a meaning. Now it is hollow. Everything is hollow—things are empty: time is empty. And so am I.

I asked Marie Lambert the other day whether she thought me intelligent. She looked me straight in the eye. “You are very intelligent.…”

“There is a but,” I said.

“Intelligence withers if it is not fed. You ought to let your husband find you a job.”

“The kind of work I could do would bring me nothing.”

“That is very far from certain.”

I had an inspiration this morning: the whole thing is my fault. My worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together. I imagined I had kept my thirty-year-old face and body instead of taking care of myself, doing gymnastics and going to a beauty parlor. I let my intelligence wither away: I no longer cultivated my mind—later, I said, when the children have gone. (Perhaps my father’s death was not without bearing on this way of letting things slide. Something snapped. I stopped time from that moment on.) Yes: the young student Maurice married felt passionately about what was happening in the world, about books and ideas; she was very unlike the woman of today, whose world lies between the four walls of this apartment. It is true enough that I tended to shut Maurice in. I thought his home was enough for him: I thought I owned him entirely. Generally speaking I took everything for granted; and that must have irritated him intensely—Maurice who changes and who calls things in question. Being irritating—no one can ever get away with that. I should never have been obstinate about our promise of faithfulness, either. If I had given Maurice back his freedom—and made use of mine, too, perhaps—Noëllie would not have profited by the glamour of clandestinity. I should have coped with the situation at once. Is there still time? I told Marie Lambert that I was going to have it all out with Maurice and take steps to deal with the position. I have already taken to reading again a little and to listening to records: I must make a greater effort. Lose several pounds, dress better. Talk with Maurice more openly, refuse to have silences. She listened to me without enthusiasm. She wanted to know which of us was responsible for my first pregnancy, Maurice or I. Both of us. Or I was, if you like, in that I trusted in the calendar too much; but it was not my fault if it let me down. Had I insisted upon keeping the child? No. Upon not keeping it? No. The thing decided itself. She seemed skeptical. Her idea is that Maurice harbors a serious grudge against me. I countered that with Isabelle’s argument—the beginning of our marriage would not have been so happy if he had not wanted it. Her reply seems to me very far-fetched: so as not to admit his disappointment Maurice staked everything on love—he went all out for happiness, and once his enthusiasm faded he rediscovered the resentment that he had repressed. She herself feels that her argument is weak. His old grievances would not have sprung up again with such strength as to separate him from me if there had been no new ones. I asserted that he had none whatever.

Does Maurice stay with me out of pity? If so I ought to tell him to go. I could not bring myself to it. If he stays, perhaps Noëllie will lose heart and turn to Vallin or someone else. Or perhaps he will come to understand once more what we have been for one another.

What exhausts me is the way he is kind one day and surly and unaffectionate the next. I never know which is going to open the door. It is as though he were appalled at having hurt me and yet afraid of giving me too much hope. Should I settle down definitively into despair? But then he would quite forget what I was once and why he had loved me.

Of course. Colette never felt herself ill-treated because of her own free will she complied with what I expected of her. And obviously she cannot think that it is a pity that she is what she is. I asked her whether she did not get bored? (Jean-Pierre is a worthy soul, but not much fun.) No: it was rather that she can hardly cope with all she has to do. Keeping house is not as easy as she had thought. She no longer has time to read or to listen to music. “Try to find it,” I told her; “otherwise one ends up by growing completely stupid.” I said that I really knew what I was talking about. She laughed—if I was stupid, then she was quite happy to be stupid too. She loves me dearly: that at least will not be taken away from me. But have I crushed her? Certainly I foresaw a completely different kind of life for her—a more active, richer life. At her age mine, with Maurice, was far more so. Has she lost her vitality, living in my shade?

It was rather pleasure that held aloof from me. I hope Maurice did not notice it. He had booked a table at the Club 46. Magnificent supper, excellent cabaret. He was lavish with his money and his kindness. I had on a pretty new dress and I smiled, but I was in an unbearable state of distress. All those couples.… These women, all well-dressed, well-jeweled, well made up, their hair well done—they laughed, showing their well-tended teeth, looked after by excellent dentists. The men lit their cigarettes for them, poured them out champagne: they exchanged affectionate looks and little loving remarks. Other years it had seemed to me that the bond that joined each him to each personal her, each her to each personal him, was positively tangible. I believed in unions, because I believe in ours. Now what I saw was individuals set down by chance opposite one another. From time to time the old illusion came to life again: Maurice seemed welded to me—he was my husband just as Colette was my daughter, in a way that could not be undone: a relationship that could be forgotten, that could be twisted, but that could never be done away with. And then there was no current between him and me anymore—nothing passing whatever: two strangers. I felt like shouting, It’s all untrue, it’s all playacting, it’s all a farce—drinking champagne together does not mean taking communion. As we came home Maurice kissed me. “That was a good evening, wasn’t it?”

She was dreadfully concerned at seeing me so upset. Because I was wrong to be uneasy? Or because I was right? Later on I asked Maurice why he had looked vexed.

“But I wasn’t!”

“You say that as though you were.”

“No. Not at all.”

Perhaps it was my question that vexed him. I cannot tell anymore. From now on, always, everywhere, there is a reverse side to my words and my actions that escapes me.

“Obviously I spoke to her about it.” He shrugged. “A woman is never happy unless what she is given has been violently wrenched from another. It is not the thing in itself that counts: it is the victory won.”