Apparently it wasn’t age alone that counted: Aunt Lili could only read books written ‘for young ladies’; Mama had snatched a copy of Claudine at School out of the hands of Louise, and that evening, commenting on the incident to Papa, she had said: ‘Fortunately she hadn’t the least idea what it was about!’ Marriage was the antidote which allowed you to partake freely and without danger of the sometimes highly suspect fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: but I simply couldn’t understand why. I never dreamed of discussing these problems with my friends. One girl had been expelled from the school because she had had ‘evil conversations’ with some of the other girls; I took a virtuous pride in the thought that if she had tried to draw me into one of her infamous tête-à-têtes I should have turned a deaf ear.
Yet my cousin Madeleine read whatever she liked. Papa had been highly indignant one day when he had caught her, at the age of twelve, deep in The Three Musketeers: Aunt Hélène had merely shrugged her shoulders helplessly. Gorged with novels that were considered ‘too old’ for her, Madeleine did not appear to be contemplating suicide. In 1919, my parents found in the rue de Rennes a less expensive apartment than the one in the boulevard Montparnasse, and left my sister and me at La Grillière during the first fortnight in October while they moved house. We were alone with Madeleine from morning to night, and one day, quite out of the blue, after a game of croquet, I asked her what the mystery of all these forbidden books could be; I didn’t wish for a revelation of their contents; I simply wanted to know why they were forbidden us.
We had laid aside our mallets and the three of us were reclining in the grass at the edge of the croquet-lawn. Madeleine hesitated at first, then giggled, and began to enlighten us. She pointed out to us that her pet dog had two balls between his hind legs. ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘men have them, too!’ In a collection of stories she had read a certain very melodramatic tale, in which a marchioness who was jealous of her husband had his ‘balls’ cut off while he was asleep. This caused his death. I found this anatomy lesson was quite beside the point, and without realizing that I was indulging in an ‘evil conversation’ I urged Madeleine to be more forthcoming: what else was there? She then explained the meanings of the words ‘lover’ and ‘mistress’: if Mama and Uncle Maurice loved one another, she would be his mistress, and he would be her lover. She did not make clear what was meant by ‘love’, and so her incongruous hypothesis, while disconcerting me, did not enlighten me in any way. I only began to take an interest in what she was saying when she tried to explain to me how children were born; the intervention of the divine will in this phenomenon had long ago ceased to satisfy me, because I knew that, miracles apart, God’s influence could work only through natural causality: the things of this world required a worldly explanation. Madeleine confirmed all my suspicions: babies are formed in their mother’s womb; a few days earlier, while she was skinning a rabbit, the cook had found six little rabbits inside it. When a woman is expecting a baby, she is said to be pregnant, and her stomach swells up. Madeleine did not give us any other details. She went on to announce, however, that within a year or two certain things would happen inside my body; I should have my ‘whites’ and then I would bleed every month and I should have to wear some kind of bandage between my thighs. I asked if these emissions would be called my ‘reds’, and my sister was worried about how she would manage with all those bandages: how would she make water? These questions exasperated Madeleine; she said we were a couple of ninnies, lifted her shoulders in an expressive despair, and went off to feed her chickens. Perhaps she sensed our childish unpreparedness and considered us unworthy of a more elaborate initiation. I was dumbfounded by it all; I had imagined that the secrets so carefully guarded by grown-ups must be of a much loftier significance. On the other hand, Madeleine’s sniggeringly confidential manner was hardly in keeping with the curious triviality of her revelations; there was something not quite right, but I didn’t know what. She had not attempted to explain the problem of conception upon which I meditated deeply during the next few days; having grasped that cause and effect are of necessity intimately bound up with one another, I could not accept that it was the ceremony of marriage which caused a creature of flesh and blood to grow in a woman’s stomach; there must be some sort of organic function which took place between the husband and the wife. The behaviour of animals might have shed some light on the problem: I had seen a big Alsatian glued to the hind quarters of Madeleine’s little fox-terrier Criquette, while Madeleine, in tears, attempted to separate them. ‘Her puppies will be too big: Criquette will die!’ she howled. But I did not associate these animal frolics – no more than I did those of fowls and flies – with human behaviour. The expressions ‘ties of blood’, ‘children of the same blood’, ‘blood relationship’, ‘one’s own flesh and blood’, and ‘blood is thicker than water’ suggested to me that on the wedding-day, once and for all, a little of the husband’s blood was transfused into his partner’s veins; I imagined the married pair standing beside one another with the man’s right wrist bound to the woman’s left wrist: it would be a solemn operation presided over by the priest and a few chosen witnesses.
Although they had been rather confusing, Madeleine’s bits of gossip must have disturbed us profoundly, because my sister and I then abandoned ourselves to wild verbal debaucheries. Aunt Hélène, so gentle and so little prone to moralizing, with her air of always being somewhere else, did not intimidate us at all. We started saying all sorts of things in front of her that were ‘not nice’ or ‘not proper’. In the drawing-room with its dust-sheeted furniture she would sometimes seat herself at the piano and sing us the songs of 1900, of which she had a large collection; we always chose the most questionable ones and took great delight in carolling: ‘The white breasts are lovelier by far – to my hungry mouth – than the wild strawberries of the woods – and their milk I suck . . .’ The beginning of this particular ballad intrigued us very much: was it to be interpreted literally? Do men sometimes drink the milk from women’s breasts? Is it one of a ‘lover’s’ secret rites? In any case, the lines were decidedly ‘improper’. We wrote them with our fingers on steamy window panes and recited them at the tops of our voices in front of Aunt Hélène; we pestered her with ‘unsuitable’ questions, at the same time hinting that the grown-ups couldn’t take us in any longer. I think that our disordered exuberance was in fact highly organized; we were not accustomed to clandestinity, and we wanted to warn the grown-ups that we had rumbled their secrets; but we lacked the courage and so we felt the need to let off steam in some other way: our frankness took the form of provocation. When we got back to Paris, my sister, less inhibited than myself, ventured to ask Mama if babies came out of one’s navel. ‘Why do you ask such silly questions?’ my mother said, rather tartly. ‘You know everything already.’ Aunt Hélène had apparently tipped her off. Relieved at having negotiated this initial barrier we pressed Mama for more details; she gave us to understand that little babies came out of the anus, quite painlessly. She spoke in a detached tone of voice; but we were not encouraged to make further inquiries: I never again discussed these problems with her, and she never said another word to us about them.
I can’t remember having pondered very long over the phenomena of pregnancy and child-birth: nor did I associate them at all with my own future; I was averse to marriage and maternity, and so I felt they did not concern me. But our so-called initiation disturbed me in another way. It had left many mysteries unexplained. What relationship was there between this serious affair, the birth of a child, and things that were ‘not nice’ or ‘not proper’? If there were none, then why did Madeleine’s tone of voice and Mama’s own reticence force us to suppose there was one? It had been only at our instigation that Mama had spoken to us, and very summarily, about these things, and she had said nothing about marriage. Physiological facts are as much a part of common knowledge as the rotation of the earth: what was it prevented her from telling us about them as about everything else? On the other hand
, if forbidden books contained, as my cousin had suggested, only rather comical indecencies, what great harm was there in them? I did not actually ask myself these questions, but they tormented me all the same. It must be that the body was by reason of its own nature a dangerous object when every allusion to its existence, whether serious or frivolous, seemed fraught with peril.
Assuming that something was being deliberately concealed behind the grown-ups’ veil of silence, I did not charge them with making a fuss about nothing. But I had lost all my illusions as to the nature of their secret: they had no access to occult spheres where the white radiance of eternity shone brighter for them than it did for us, or where the horizon was vaster than that of my smaller world. My disillusionment served to reduce the universe and mankind to a trivial day-to-day level. I did not realize it immediately, but the prestige of grown-ups had suffered a considerable diminution in my esteem.
*
I had been taught the vanity of vanity and the futility of futility; I should have been ashamed to attach importance to dress and to preen myself in front of a looking-glass; all the same, when circumstances authorized it, I found myself looking upon my reflection not with disfavour. Despite my timidity, I aspired, as in my early infancy, to play the leading roles in life. On the day of my First Communion, I had a resounding success. I had long been familiar with the Lord’s Table, and felt I could now enjoy without any pangs of conscience the profane delights of the festive occasion. My robe, lent by a cousin, was nothing extraordinary; but instead of the usual tulle head-dress, the pupils of the Cours Désir wore a wreath of roses; this detail indicated that I did not belong to the common herd of children in the parish. Abbé Martin administered the host to a very select company; moreover, I was chosen to be the one to renew in the name of all my companions the solemn vows by which we had renounced, on our christening day, the pomps and vanities and evil works of the Arch Fiend. My aunt Marguerite gave in my honour a magnificent lunch at which I, as guest of honour, importantly presided. In the afternoon there was a tea-party at home and I displayed upon the grand piano all the gifts I had received. I was fêted and congratulated, and I was very pleased with myself: I thought I was looking particularly lovely. That night it was with great regret that I laid my finery aside; I comforted myself a little by entertaining the idea of marriage for a moment or two: the day would come when, clad in white satin, in a blaze of candles and under great blasts of organ-music I would be changed once again into a queen.
The following year, I was delighted to take over the lesser role of bridesmaid. Aunt Lili was getting married. The ceremony was without ostentation; but my own get-up enchanted me. I loved the silky feel of my blue foulard dress; my hair was tied with a black velvet ribbon and I wore a sunbonnet of natural straw garlanded with poppies and corn-flowers. My escort was a good-looking boy of nineteen who talked to me as if I were a grown-up person: I was quite certain that he found me irresistible.
I began to take an interest in the sort of figure I thought I should cut in life. Besides the more serious works and adventure stories which I borrowed from the circulating library, I also read the novels in a popular series called ‘La Bibliothèque de ma Fille’, which had enlivened my mother’s adolescence and now occupied a whole shelf in my bedroom cupboard. When I was at La Grillière, I was allowed to read Les Veillées des chaumières and the volumes in the ‘Stella’ collection which enthralled Madeleine so much: Delly, Guy Chantepleure, La Neuvaine de Colette, Mon oncle et mon curé: these virtuous idylls I did not find very amusing; I thought their heroines were silly, their lovers insipid; but there was one book in which I believed I had caught a glimpse of my future self: Little Women, by Louisa M. Alcott. The March girls were Protestants, their father was a pastor and their mother had given them as a bedside book not The Imitation of Christ but The Pilgrim’s Progress: these slight differences only made the things we had in common with the March girls stand out all the more. I was moved when Meg and Jo had to put on their poor brown poplin frocks to go to a matinée at which all the other children were dressed in silk; they were taught, as I was, that a cultivated mind and moral righteousness were better than money; their modest home, like my own, had about it – I don’t know why – something quite exceptional. I identified myself passionately with Jo, the intellectual. Brusque and bony, Jo clambered up into trees when she wanted to read; she was much more tomboyish and daring than I was, but I shared her horror of sewing and housekeeping and her love of books. She wrote: in order to imitate her more completely, I composed two or three short stories. I don’t know if I dreamed of reviving my old friendship with Jacques, or if, rather more vaguely, I was longing for the barrier between my own world and the world of boys to be broken down, but the relationship between Jo and Laurie touched me to the heart. Later, I had no doubt, they would marry one another; so it was possible for maturity to bring to fruition, instead of denying them, the promises made in childhood; this thought filled me with renewed hope. But the thing that delighted me most of all was the marked partiality which Louisa Alcott manifested for Jo. As I have said, I detested the sort of grown-up condescension which lumped all children under the same heading. The defects and qualities which authors gave their young heroes seemed usually to be inconsequential accidents: when they grew up they would all be good as gold: moreover it was only their personal morality that distinguished them one from the other, never their intelligence; it was almost as if from this point of view their age had made them all equal. But in Little Women Jo was superior to her sisters, who were either more virtuous or more beautiful than herself, because of her passion for knowledge and the vigour of her thought; her superiority was as outstanding as that of certain adults, and guaranteed that she would have an unusual life: she was marked by fate. I, too, felt I was entitled to consider my taste for reading and my scholastic successes as tokens of a personal superiority which would be borne out by the future. I became in my own eyes a character out of a novel. I invented all kinds of romantic intrigues that were full of obstacles and setbacks for the heroine. One afternoon I was playing croquet with Poupette, Jeanne, and Madeleine. We were wearing beige pinafores with red scallops and embroidered with cherries. The clumps of laurel were shining in the sun, and the earth smelt good. Suddenly I was struck motionless: I was living through the first chapter of a novel in which I was the heroine; she was still almost a child, but we, too, were growing up. I decided that my sister and my cousins, who were prettier, more graceful, and altogether nicer than myself would be more popular than I; they would find husbands, but not I. I should feel no bitterness about it; people would be right to prefer them to me; but something would happen which would exalt me beyond all personal preference; I did not know under what form, or by whom I should be recognized for what I was. I imagined that already there was someone watching the croquet lawn and the four little girls in their beige pinafores: the gaze rested on me and a voice murmured: ‘She is not as other girls.’ It was utterly ridiculous to compare me with a sister and cousins so lacking in all pretensions. But I aspired, through them, to those higher modes of being where I should be with my equals. I was convinced that I would be, that I was already, one in a million.
But it was only rarely that I gave myself up to these proud revindications of my personality: the great esteem in which I was held made them unnecessary. And if sometimes I thought I was an exceptional young person, I no longer looked upon myself as unique. Henceforward my self-sufficiency was tempered by feelings inspired by someone else outside my family. I had had the good fortune to find a friend.
*
The day I entered the fourth-first form – I was then rising ten – the seat next to mine was occupied by a new girl: she was small, dark, thin-faced, with short hair. While we waited for Mademoiselle to come in, and when the class was over, we talked together. She was called Elizabeth Mabille, and she was the same age as myself. Her schooling, begun with a governess, had been interrupted by a serious accident: in the country, while roastin
g some potatoes out in the open, her dress had caught fire; third-degree bums on her thighs had made her scream with agony for night after night; she had had to remain lying down for a whole year; under her pleated skirt, her flesh was still puffed up. Nothing as important as that had ever happened to me; she at once seemed to me a very finished person. The manner in which she spoke to the teachers astounded me; her natural inflexions contrasted strongly with the stereotyped expressionless voices of the rest of the pupils. Her conquest of me was complete when, a few days later, she mimicked Mademoiselle Bodet to perfection; everything she had to say was either interesting or amusing.
Despite certain gaps in her knowledge due to enforced inactivity, Elizabeth soon became one of the foremost in the class; I only just managed to beat her at composition. Our friendly rivalry pleased our teachers: they encouraged our association. At the musical and dramatic performance which was given every year round about Christmas, we played in a sketch. I, in a pink dress, my hair all in ringlets, impersonated Madame de Sévigné as a little girl; Elizabeth took the part of a high-spirited boy cousin; her young man’s costume suited her, and she enchanted the audience with her vivacity and ease. The rehearsals, our repeated conversations in the glow of the footlights drew us closer and closer together; from then on we were called ‘the two inseparables’.
My father and mother had long discussions about the different branches of various families they had heard of called Mabille; they decided that there was some vague connexion between Elizabeth’s parents and themselves. Her father was a railway engineer, and held a very high post; her mother, née Larivière, belonged to a dynasty of militant Catholics; she had nine children and was an active worker for charity. She sometimes put in an appearance at our school in the rue Jacob. She was a handsome woman of about forty, dark-haired, with flashing eyes and a studied smile, who wore a black velvet ribbon adorned with an old-fashioned piece of jewellery round her neck. She softened her regal bearing with a deliberate amiability of manner. She completely won Mama over by addressing her as ‘petite madame’ (my dear lady) and by telling her that she could easily have mistaken her for my elder sister, Elizabeth and I were allowed to go and play in each other’s homes.