Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

  I think I must also have considered the task of the executant to be a very minor one, because it seemed to me to be concerned only with appearances. Fundamentally I believed that the essential truth of a sonata could be discovered in the notes on the stave, as immutable and eternal as the truth of Macbeth in a printed book. The task of the creator was something quite superior. I thought it was wonderful that you could bring into the world something real, something new. There was only one region in which I could venture my creative talent: literature. Drawing was no more than copying, and I didn’t care for art, all the more so because I was not very good at it: I reacted to the general appearance of an object without paying much attention to its details; I could never succeed in drawing even the simplest flower. In compensation, I knew how to use language, and as it expressed the essence of things, it illuminated them for me. I had a spontaneous urge to turn everything that happened to me into a story: I used to talk freely, and loved to write. If I was describing in words an episode in my life, I felt that it was being rescued from oblivion, that it would interest others, and so be saved from extinction. I loved to make up stories, too: when they were inspired by my own experience, they seemed to justify it; in one sense they were of no use at all, but they were unique and irreplaceable, they existed, and I was proud of having snatched them out of nothingness. So I took a great deal of trouble over my French compositions: I even copied some of them into my ‘book of gold’.

  When July came round, the prospect of the long holiday in the country enabled me to say good-bye to the Cours Désir without too much regret. But when we returned to Paris I would feverishly await the first day of school. I would sit in the leather armchair beside the black pear-wood bookcase, and make the spines of my new books crack gently as I opened them for the first time; I would sniff their special smell, look at the pictures and the maps, skim through a page of history: I used to wish that with the wave of a wand I could make all the characters and all the landscapes hidden in the shade of the black and white pages spring to life. The power I had over them intoxicated me as much as their silent presence.

  Apart from my school work, reading was the great passion of my life. Mama now got her books from the Bibliothèque Cardinale, in the place Saint-Sulpice. A table loaded with reviews and magazines occupied the centre of a large room beyond which extended corridors lined with books: the clients had the right to wander where they pleased. I experienced one of the greatest joys I ever knew as a child the day when Mama announced that she was taking out a personal subscription for me. I stood with arms akimbo in front of the section marked ‘Works suitable for Children’, in which there were hundreds of volumes. ‘All this belongs to me! ‘I said to myself, bewildered by such a profusion of riches. The reality surpassed my wildest dreams: before me lay the entry to a rich and unknown paradise. I took a catalogue home with me: assisted by my parents, I made a selection from the works marked ‘J’ for juvenile, and I drew up lists of the books I required; each week I hovered, with delicious hesitations, over a multiplicity of desirable choices. In addition, my mother sometimes took me to a little bookshop near the school, to buy English novels; they were a ‘good buy’, because it took me a long time to get through them. I took great pleasure in lifting, with the aid of a dictionary, the dark veil of foreign words; descriptions and stories retained a certain mystery; I used to find them more charming and more profound than if I had merely read them in French.

  That year my father made me a present of L’Abbé Constantin in a beautiful edition illustrated by Madeleine Lemaire. One Sunday he took me to the Comédie Française to see the play which had been adapted from the novel. For the very first time I was admitted to a real theatre, one that was frequented by grown-ups: quivering with excitement, I took my place on the red plush seat and listened to the actors with religious attention: I was rather disappointed in them; Cécile Sorel’s dyed hair and affected manner of speaking did not correspond at all to the image I had in my mind of Madame Scott. Two or three years later, weeping at Cyrano, sobbing over L’Aiglon, vibrating to Britannicus, I was to give myself up body and soul to the magic of the stage. But on that first afternoon what delighted me was less the performance than being taken out by my father; to be attending, alone with him, the performance of a play he had chosen specially for me, created such a feeling of intimacy between us that for a few hours I had the intoxicating impression that he belonged to me alone.

  About this period, my feelings for my father took a loftier turn. He was often worried. He said that Foch had let himself be talked into giving way to the Germans. He talked a lot about the Bolsheviks, whose name dangerously resembled that of the Boche and who had, he said, ruined him; he was so pessimistic about the future that he didn’t dare set up in business as a lawyer again. He accepted the post of co-director in my grandfather’s factory. He had already suffered many disappointments; as a consequence of my grandfather’s bankruptcy, my mother’s dowry had never been paid over to him. Now, his career finished, the Russian stocks which had brought in the larger part of his income having slumped disastrously, he regretfully placed himself in the category of the ‘newly-poor’. He nevertheless managed to preserve a good-tempered equanimity, and would rather seek the reason for his misfortunes in the state of the world than waste his time in self-pity: I was moved by the spectacle of a man of such superior attainments adapting himself so simply to the shabbiness of his new position in the world. I saw him one day playing, in a charity show, the leading part in La Paix chez soi by Courteline. He played the role of a hard-up newspaper hack, beset by money troubles and by the extravagant caprices of a child-wife; the latter bore no resemblance to Mama; nevertheless, I identified my father with the character he played; he gave his interpretation a disillusioned irony which moved me almost to tears; there was melancholy in his resignation: the hidden wound I sensed in him added to his stature. I adored him, with a romantic fervour.

  On fine summer evenings he would sometimes take us for a walk after dinner in the Luxembourg Gardens; we would have ices on the terrace of a café in the place Médicis, then we would stroll back through the gardens as the bugle call warned us that the gates were about to be closed. I envied the Senators their nocturnal reveries in the deserted avenues. My daily routine was as inalterable as the rhythm of the seasons: the slightest deviation transported me almost into the realms of fantasy. To be walking in the tranquil twilight, at a time when Mama was usually bolting the front door for the night, was as startling and as poetical as finding a hawthorn in flower in the middle of winter.

  There was one quite extraordinary evening when we were drinking hot chocolate on the terrace of the Café Prévost, near the offices of Le Matin. An electric sign on the top of the building was giving the progress of the fight between Dempsey and Carpentier in New York. The street corners were black with people. When Carpentier was knocked out, men and women burst into tears; I went home filled with pride at having been the witness of such a great event. But I was no less happy when we spent the evening at home in Papa’s cosy study while he read us Le Voyage de Monsieur Perrickon; or we would each read our own book. I would look at my parents and my sister, and feel my heart flood with affectionate warmth. ‘Us four!’ I would say to myself, in silent rapture. And I would think: ‘How happy we are.’

  There was only one thing that sometimes cast a shadow on this happy state: I knew that one day this period in my life would come to an end. It seemed unbelievable. When you have loved your parents for twenty years or so, how can you leave them to live with a stranger, without dying of unhappiness? And how, when you have done without him for twenty years, can you up and love a man who is nothing to you? I asked Papa about it. ‘A husband is something different,’ he replied, with a little smile that did nothing to enlighten me. I always looked upon marriage with disfavour. I didn’t look upon it as servitude, for my own mother had nothing of the slave about her; it was the promiscuity of marriage that repelled me. ‘At night when you go to bed, you wo
n’t be able to have a good cry in peace!’ I would tell myself in horror. I don’t know if my happiness was broken by fits of sadness, or whether I used to weep in the night for the sheer pleasure of it; I rather think that my tears were a borderline case: if I had forced myself to restrain them, I should have been denying myself that minimum of personal liberty which I needed so badly. All day long, I felt that people’s eyes were upon me; I liked and even loved the people around me, but when I went to bed at night I felt a sharp sense of relief at the idea of being able to live at least for a little while without being watched by others; then I could talk to myself, remember things, allow my emotions a free rein and hearken to those tender inner promptings which are stifled by the presence of grown-ups. I should have felt it quite unbearable to be deprived of this respite. I needed to escape at least for a few moments from all parental solicitude and talk quietly to myself without interruptions from anyone.

  *

  I was very pious; I made my confession twice a month to Abbé Martin, received Holy Communion three times a week and every morning read a chapter of The Imitation of Christ; between classes, I would slip into the school chapel and, with my head in my hands, I would offer up lengthy prayers; often in the course of the day I would lift up my soul to my Maker. I was no longer very interested in the Infant Jesus, but I adored Christ to distraction. As supplements to the Gospels, I had read disturbing novels of which He was the hero, and it was now with the eyes of a lover that I gazed upon His grave, tender, handsome face; I would follow, across hills covered with olive groves, the shining hem of His snow-white robe, bathe His naked feet with my tears; and He would smile down upon me as He had smiled upon the Magdalen. When I had had my fill of clasping His knees and sobbing on His blood-stained corpse, I would allow Him to ascend into heaven. There He became one with that more mysterious Being to whom I owed my existence on earth, and whose throne of glory would one day, and for ever, fill my eyes with a celestial radiance.

  How comforting to know that He was there! I had been told that He cherished every single one of His creatures as if each were the one and only; His eye was upon me every instant, and all others were excluded from our divine conversations; I would forget them all, there would be only He and I in the world, and I felt I was a necessary part of His glory: my existence, through Him, was of infinite price. There was nothing He did not know: even more definitely than in my teachers’ registers my acts, my thoughts, and my excellences were inscribed in Him for eternity; my faults and errors too, of course, but these were washed so clean in the waters of repentance that they shone just as brightly as my virtues. I never tired of admiring myself in that pure mirror that was without beginning or end. My reflection, all radiant with the joy I inspired in God’s heart, consoled me for all my earthly shortcomings and failures; it saved me from the indifference, from the injustice and the misunderstandings of human nature. For God was always on my side; if I had done wrong in any way, at the very instant that I dropped upon my knees to ask His forgiveness He breathed upon my tarnished soul and restored to it all its lustre. But usually, bathed as I was in His eternal radiance, the faults I was accused of simply melted away; His judgement was my justification. He was the supreme arbiter who found that I was always right. I loved Him with all the passion I brought to life itself.

  Each year I went into retreat for several days; all day long, I would listen to my priest’s instructions, attend services, tell my beads and meditate; I would remain at school for a frugal repast, and during the meal someone would read to us from the life of a saint. In the evenings, at home, my mother would respect my silent meditations. I wrote down in a special notebook the outpourings of my immortal soul and my saintly resolutions. I ardently desired to grow closer to God, but I didn’t know how to go about it. My conduct left so little to be desired that I could hardly be any better than I already was; besides, I wondered if God was really concerned about my general behaviour. The majority of faults that Mama reprimanded my sister and me for were just awkward blunders or careless mistakes. Poupette was severely scolded and punished for having lost a civet-fur collar. When, fishing for shrimps in ‘the English river’, I fell into the water, I was overcome with panic at the thought of the telling-off I felt was in store for me; fortunately I was let off that time. But these misdemeanours had nothing to do with Sin, and I didn’t feel that by steering clear of them I was making myself any more perfect. The embarrassing thing was that God forbade so many things, but never asked for anything positive apart from a few prayers or religious practices which did not change my daily course in any way. I even found it most peculiar to see people who had just received Holy Communion plunging straight away into the ordinary routine of their lives again; I did the same, but it embarrassed me. Taken all in all, it seemed to me that believers and non-believers led just the same kind of life; I became more and more convinced that there was no room for the supernatural in everyday life. And yet it was that other-worldly life that really counted: it was the only kind that mattered. It suddenly became obvious to me one morning that a Christian who was convinced of his eternal salvation ought not to attach any importance to the ephemeral things of this world. How could the majority of people go on living in the world as it was? The more I thought about it, the more I wondered at it. I decided that I, at any rate, would not follow their example: my choice was made between the finite and the infinite. ‘I shall become a nun,’ I told myself. The activities of sisters of charity seemed to me quite useless; the only reasonable occupation was to contemplate the glory of God to the end of my days. I would become a Carmelite. But I did not make my decision public: it would not have been taken seriously. I contented myself with the announcement that I did not intend to marry. My father smiled: ‘We’ll have plenty of time to think about that when you’re fifteen years old.’ In my heart of hearts I resented his smile. I knew that an implacable logic led me to the convent: how could you prefer having nothing to having everything?

  This imaginary future provided me with a convenient alibi. For many years it allowed me to enjoy without scruple all the good things of this world.

  *

  My happiness used to reach its height during, the two and a half months which I spent every summer in the country. My mother was always more relaxed there than in Paris; my father devoted more time to me then; and I enjoyed a vast leisure for reading and playing with my sister. I did not miss the Cours Désir: that feeling of necessity which study gave my life spilled over into the holidays My time was no longer strictly measured by the exigencies of a timetable; but its absence was largely compensated for by the immensity of the horizons which opened themselves before my curious eyes. I explored them all unaided: the mediation of grownups no longer interposed a barrier between the world and myself. The solitude and freedom which were only rarely mine during the course of the year were now almost boundless, and I had my fill of them. In the country all my aspirations seemed to be brought together and realized; my fidelity to the past and my taste for novelty, my love for my parents and my growing desire for independence.

  At first we usually spent a few weeks at La Grillière. The castle seemed to me to be vast and very old; it had been built barely fifty years ago, but none of the objects – furniture or ornaments – that had been brought there half a century ago were ever changed or taken away. No hand ventured to sweep away the relics of the past: you could smell the odour of vanished lives. A collection of hunting horns hanging in the tiled hall, all of them made of shining copper, evoked – erroneously, I believe – the magnificence of bygone stag-hunts. In what was called the ‘billiard room’, which was where we usually foregathered, stuffed foxes, buzzards, and kites perpetuated this bloodthirsty tradition. There was no billiard table in the room, but it contained a monumental chimney-piece, a bookcase, always carefully locked, and a large table strewn with copies of hunting magazines; there were pedestal tables laden with yellowing photographs, sheaves of peacock feathers, pebbles, terracotta ornaments, barometers,
clocks that would never go and lamps that were never lit. Apart from the dining-room, the other rooms were rarely used: there was a drawing-room, embalmed in the stink of moth balls, a smaller drawing-room, a study and a kind of office whose shutters were always closed and that served as a kind of lumber room or glory-hole. In a small box-room filled with a pungent smell of old leather lay generations of riding boots and ladies’ shoes. Two staircases led to the upper storeys where there were corridors leading to well over a dozen rooms,’ most of them disused and filled with dusty bric-à-brac. I shared one of them with my sister. We slept in fourposter beds. Pictures cut out of illustrated magazines and amateurishly framed decorated the walls.