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But it was raining outside, and he did not have his raincoat with him; he was not wet. He had been to telephone Noëllie. She had insisted upon his telephoning: she didn’t even have the generosity to let me have him all to myself even for one wretched weekend. I said nothing. The day dragged along. Each realized that the other was making an effort to be pleasant and cheerful. We both agreed to go back to Paris for dinner and finish the evening at the cinema.
leave himmmmm
I shan’t struggle. But fear touched me all at once. Could it conceivably be that Maurice does prefer her to me? The idea had never occurred to me. I know that I possess—all right, let’s leave that word authenticity out of it: maybe it is a trifle priggish—a certain quality that she does not. “You have real quality, my dear,” my father used to say to me, proudly. And Maurice too, in other words. It is this quality that I value above anything else in people—in Maurice, and in Isabelle: and Maurice is like me. No. It is impossible that he should prefer someone as bogus as Noëllie to me. She is “cheap,” as they say in English. But it worries me that he should accept in her so many things that I consider unacceptable. For the first time I see that a gap has come into being between us.
I telephoned Quillan the day before yesterday. Oh, I’m not at all proud of it. I had to make sure that a man could still find me desirable. That has been proved. And where does it get me? It has not made me any more desirable to myself.
No, I must not try to follow Noëllie on to her ground, but fight it out on my own. Maurice used to be touched by all the little things I did for him, and now I am neglecting him. I spent today tidying our wardrobes. I finally put away the summer things, brought the winter clothes out of their mothballs and aired them, and drew up a list. Tomorrow I shall go and buy him the socks, pullovers and pajamas he needs. He also needs two good pairs of shoes; we’ll choose them together the next time he has a free moment. Well-filled cupboards with everything in its place are a great comfort to one. Plenty: security.… The heaps of delicate handkerchiefs and stockings and lingerie gave me the feeling that the future could not possibly let me down.
girl
I must learn to control myself. But it’s so foreign to my nature! I always used to be spontaneous and completely open: serene, too. Whereas now my heart is filled with anxiety and bitterness. When he opened a magazine directly after leaving the table, I thought, He wouldn’t do that at Noëllie’s. And I couldn’t help it—I burst out, “You wouldn’t do that at Noéllie’s!”
His eyes flashed. “I just wanted to glance at an article,” he said evenly. “Don’t bristle like that over trifles.”
“It’s not my fault. Everything makes me bristle.”
I did not listen for long; sobs rose in my throat; the music was now merely a refuge. We no longer had anything to say to one another, haunted as we were by this affair that he did not want to discuss.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, in a longsuffering voice.
“Because you’re bored when you’re with me. Because we can’t talk to one another anymore. Because you have built a wall between us.”
“It’s you who built it: you never stop going over and over your grievances.”
I irritate him a little more every day. I don’t mean to. And yet there is a part of me that does. When he seems too cheerful and unconcerned I say to myself, This is too easy. And then any excuse is good enough for me to destroy his peace of mind.
Speaking quietly, he said, “I want those ten days with her.” The words held a scarcely concealed threat—if you deprive me of them I will make our stay in the mountains hell. The idea that I was going to give in to this blackmail made me feel sick. No more concessions! It gets me nowhere, and it disgusts me with myself. One has to look things in the face. This is not a mere affair. He is cutting his life into two, and I don’t have the larger part. I’ve had enough. Presently I shall say to him, “Her or me.”
leave him already jesus
“Yes, now. This business is dragging on too much. I have borne it too long by far.” I looked at him challengingly. “Come now, which do you like best? Her or me?”
“You, of course,” he said in a toneless voice. And he added, “But I like Noëllie too.”
I saw red. “Admit the truth, then! She’s the one you like best! All right! Go to her! Get out of here. Get out at once. Take your things and go.”
I pulled his suitcase out of the wardrobe, I flung clothes into it higgledy-piggledy, I unhooked coat hangers. He took my arm: “Stop!” I went on. I wanted him to go; I really wanted it—it was sincere. Sincere because I did not believe in it. It was like a dreadful psychodrama in which they play at truth. It is the truth, but it is being acted. I shouted, “Go and join that bitch, that schemer, that dirty little shady lawyer.”
so close
So for eight years now he has not loved me and he has been going to bed with other women—with the little Pelleria, for two years, with a South American patient that I know nothing about at all; with a nurse at the hospital; and lastly for eighteen months past with Noëllie. I screamed: I was on the edge of hysteria. Then he gave me a tranquilizer and his voice altered. “Listen, I don’t really mean all I have just said. Only you are so unfair you make me unfair too.”
a tranquillizer lol
I am in a dilemma. If Maurice is a swine, then I have wrecked my life, loving him. But perhaps he had reasons for not being able to bear me any more. In that case I must look upon myself as hateful and contemptible, without even knowing why. Both suppositions are appalling.
:(