View all notes
Available query params: commented=1, untagged=1
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.”
jesus what a jerk
I chose going to pieces: I no longer know when it is day and when it is night: when things are too bad, when it becomes unbearable, I gulp down spirits, tranquilizers or sleeping pills. When things are a little better I take stimulants and plunge into a detective story—I have laid in a stock. When the silence stifles me I turn on the radio and from a remote planet there come voices that I can hardly understand: that world has a time, set hours, laws, speech, anxieties and amusements that are essentially foreign to me. How far one can let oneself go, when one is entirely alone and shut in! The bedroom stinks of stale tobacco and spirits; there is ash everywhere; I am filthy; the sheets are filthy; the sky is filthy behind the filthy windows: this filth is a shell that protects me; I shall never leave it again. It would be easy to slide just a little further into the void, as far as the point of no return. I have all that is needed in my drawer. But I won’t, I won’t! I’m forty-four; it’s too early to die—it’s unfair! I can’t live any longer. I don’t want to die.
[...] There is not a single line in this diary that does not call for a correction or a denial. For example, the reason why I began to keep it, at Les Salines, was not that I had suddenly recovered my youth, nor that I wanted to fill my loneliness with people, but because I had to exorcise a certain anxiety that would not admit its own existence. It was hidden deep under the silence and the warmth of that disturbing afternoon, bound up with Maurice’s gloom and with his departure. Yes: throughout these pages I meant what I was writing and I meant the opposite; reading them again I feel completely lost. There are some remarks that make me blush for shame.… I have always wanted the truth; and the reason why I have had it is that I desired it. Is it possible to be so mistaken about one’s life as all that? Is everybody as blind as this or am I an outstanding prize half-wit? And not only a half-wit. I was lying to myself. How I lied to myself! I said that Noëllie did not amount to anything and that Maurice preferred me; and I knew perfectly well that was untrue. I have taken to my pen again not to go back over the same ground but because the emptiness within me, around me, is so vast that this movement of my hand is necessary to tell myself that I am still alive.