I drank in his words; they did not rock my universe to its foundations, they were not at variance with my own ideas, and yet they seemed to strike an absolutely new note. Of course, in my daily life, devotion to duty was always being cracked up, but it was not deemed necessary for such devotion to extend beyond the family circle, outside whose limits men were not regarded as our brothers. Working men in particular belonged to a species as dangerously foreign to our environment as the Boche and the Bolshevik. Garric had swept away these barriers: the world was now a great community in which all men were my brothers. I was thrilled by the movement’s watchwords: I had to repudiate all barriers and all artificial divisions between the classes, renounce my own class, and step outside myself. I could not imagine a service more beneficial to humanity than the dissemination of sweetness and light. I promised myself that I would join one of the ‘Groups’. But above all else I marvelled at the example which Garric gave me. At last I had met a man who instead of submitting to fate had chosen for himself a way of life; his existence, which had an aim and a meaning, was the incarnation of an idea, and was governed by its overriding necessity. That plain face with its lively but unassuming smile was the face of a hero, a superman.
I went back home in a state of exaltation; I was taking off my black coat and hat in the hall when I suddenly stood stock still; with my eyes fixed on the threadbare carpet, I heard an imperious voice within me saying: ‘My life must be of service to humanity! Everything in my life must be of service!’ I was stunned by the clear necessity of the call: innumerable tasks awaited me; it would need the whole strength of my being; if I allowed myself the slightest slackening of purpose, I would be betraying my trust and wronging humanity. ‘Everything I do must be of service!’ I told myself, with a tightening of the throat; it was a solemn vow, and I uttered it with as much feeling as if I had been pledging my whole future irrevocably in the face of heaven and earth.
I had never liked wasting time; yet now I reproached myself with having led an irresponsible existence, and henceforward I made scrupulous use of every minute. I slept less; my toilet was no more than ‘a lick and a promise’; there was no longer any question of looking at myself in mirrors: I hardly ever brushed my teeth, and never cleaned my nails. I abjured all frivolous reading matter, idle gossip, and all forms of amusement; if my mother had not objected I should have given up my Saturday morning games of tennis. I always brought a book to meals; I would be learning Greek verbs or trying to find the solution to a problem. My father got annoyed but I persisted, and in the end he gave up in disgust. When my mother was receiving friends, I refused to enter the drawing-room; sometimes she would fly into a temper, and I would give in; but I would sit perched on the edge of my chair, gritting my teeth, and with such a furious expression on my face that she very quickly sent me away again. In my family and among my friends there was great astonishment at my untidiness, my stubborn silences, and my lack of politeness; I soon got the reputation of being a kind of monster of incivility.
Without any doubt it was for the most part resentment that made me adopt this attitude; my parents did not find me to their liking, and so I deliberately made myself unpleasant. My mother dressed me badly and my father was always reproaching me with being badly dressed: so I became a slut. They were not attempting to understand me: so I took refuge in silence and odd behaviour; I wanted to make myself impervious to my surroundings. At the same time I was warding off boredom. My temperament was not suited to resignation; by taking to inordinate lengths the austerity that was my lot, it became a vocation; cut off from all pleasures, I chose the life of an ascetic; instead of dragging myself wearily through a monotony of days, I set out in stubborn silence, with set face, towards an invisible goal. I wore myself out with work, and my exhaustion gave me a feeling of fulfilment. My excesses also had a positive sense. For a long time now I had been promising myself that I would break away from the frightful banality of my daily life: Garric’s example transformed this vague hope into grim determination. I refused to be patient any longer; without further ado I set my feet upon the way to heroic heights.
Every time I saw Garric, I renewed my vows. Sitting between Thérèse and Zaza, I would await, with bated breath, the moment of his appearance. My companions’ indifference to him amazed me: I felt that one should be able to hear the beating of every heart. Zaza’s admiration for Garric was not without reservation; it exasperated her that he should always arrive late. ‘Punctuality is the politeness of kings,’ she wrote on the blackboard one day. He would come in, sit down, and cross his legs under the table, exposing mauve sock-suspenders: she was critical of such free-and-easy manners. I couldn’t understand why she fussed over these trifles, but I was glad she did, all the same; I couldn’t have borne it if someone else had hung upon my hero’s every word and smile with as much devotion as I did. I should have liked to know everything about him. In my childhood I had been trained in the techniques of meditation; I made use of them in attempts to imagine what I called, after an expression employed often by himself, his ‘interior landscape’. But I had very little to go on: his lectures, and the rather hastily written reviews he wrote for La Revue des Jeunes; and in any case I was often too ignorant to be able to make the best use of my information. There was one writer whom Garric was always quoting: Péguy; who was he? Who was this Gide whose name he had uttered one afternoon, almost furtively, and with a smile that seemed to ask forgiveness for his audacity? After the class, he would go into Madame Lambert’s study: what did they talk about? Would I one day be worthy to speak to Garric as to an equal? I occasionally lost myself in speculations. ‘Girls like you, Hellé, are made to be the companions of heroes.’ I was crossing the place Saint-Sulpice when suddenly this prophecy from my childhood blazed across the rainy twilight. Had Marcelle Tinayre foretold my future? Hellé, who at first had been dazzled by a rich, easy-going young poet, had eventually transferred her allegiance to a virtuous and noble-hearted missionary much older than herself. Today I felt that Garric’s merits eclipsed Jacques’ personal charm: had I met Mr Right? I hardly dared entertain the thought. It was somehow shocking to think of Garric being married. All I wanted was to have a small place in his life and I redoubled my efforts to gain his approval. I succeeded. A dissertation on Ronsard, the analysis of one of the Sonnets à Hélène and a lecture on d’Alembert earned me heady praise. With Zaza second, I went to the top of the class and Garric planned that we would take the literature paper at the beginning of the summer term.
Though she didn’t realize how violent it was, Zaza thought my admiration for Garric was excessive; she worked steadily, went to a few parties and theatres, and devoted a great deal of time to her family; she was still in the same old rut; she had not heard the call to which I was responding with such fanatical fervour: I saw rather less of her. After the Christmas holidays, which she had spent in the Basque country, she was overtaken by a curious apathy. She still came to lectures, but there was a glazed look in her eyes; she didn’t laugh any more, and hardly said a word; she was indifferent to her own life, and the interest I had in my own existence found no echo in her: ‘All I want is to go to sleep and never wake up again,’ she told me one day. I attached no importance to this statement. Zaza had often had fits of pessimism; I attributed this one to the fear she had of the future. This year of further education was only a brief respite for her; the fate she dreaded was gradually approaching and she probably didn’t feel strong enough to make a stand against it; neither could she resign herself to it: and so she craved release from her cares in sleep. In my own mind, I reproached her with defeatism: I thought it already indicated an abdication of individuality and responsibility. For her part, she seemed to see in my optimism the proof that I was adapting myself easily to the established order of things. Both of us were cut off from life, Zaza by her despair, and I by my insane optimism; our personal solitudes did not bring us closer together: on the contrary, we became vaguely distrustful of one another and had less and less
to say to each other.
My sister was very happy all that year; she was preparing to pass her school-leaving certificate with distinction; the Cours Désir lavished fond smiles upon her; she had a new friend whom she adored; she was only moderately concerned about my own existence and I assumed that in the near future she, too, would become a nice, quiet middle-class girl. ‘Now, Poupette-she’ll find a husband,’ my parents confidently predicted. I still liked her but after all she was just a child: I couldn’t talk to her about anything.
There was someone who might have helped me: Jacques. I now repudiated the tears I had shed so hastily over him that night; no, I didn’t love him; if I did love somebody, it wasn’t he. But I longed for his friendship. One evening when I was dining with his parents, just as we were called to take our seats at table we lingered a moment in the drawing-room, talking of this and that. My mother called me sharply to heel. ‘I beg your pardon,’ Jacques said with a faint smile, ‘we were just talking about Charles Maurras’ Interior Music. . . .’ Sadly I drank my soup. How could I let him know that I no longer derided the things I didn’t understand? If only he had talked to me about the new poems and books he liked, I would now have listened to him with deep respect. ‘We were just talking about the Interior Music. . . .’ I said that phrase over and over again, savouring its bitterness, with its after-taste of lingering hope.
I passed my literature paper with distinction. Garric congratulated me. Madame Lambert asked me into her study, looked me up and down and seemed to be sizing me up, then said I had a brilliant future ahead of me. A few days later, Jacques dined with us; towards the end of the evening he took me to one side and said: ‘I saw Garric yesterday: we had a long talk about you.’ He was interested to know how I was getting on with my studies and what my future plans were. ‘I’ll take you for a spin in the car round the Bois tomorrow,’ he said without warning. How my heart thumped! I had succeeded in making Jacques interested in me! I’d brought it off! The next morning was fine and springlike and there I was bowling along in a car with Jacques round the lakes! He laughed: ‘Watch how smartly I can pull up!’ And I bumped my nose on the windscreen. So it was still possible, even at our age, to enjoy a childlike hilarity! We talked about our childhood: Châteauvillain, the Popular Astronomy, Old Charlie and the empty tin cans I used to collect for him. ‘I really put you through the hoop, poor old Sim!’ he told me happily. I also tried stumblingly to tell him of my difficulties and problems: he nodded his head gravely as I talked. About eleven o’clock he deposited me at the tennis court in the rue Boulard and smiled mischievously at me: ‘You know,’ he said, ‘it’s possible to be a smart young lady, even if you have got a degree.’ Young ladies and gentlemen; smart young ladies and gentlemen – to be admitted to their ranks was the highest form of promotion. I strode triumphantly on to the tennis court: something had happened to me; something had begun. ‘I’ve just come from a spin in the Bois de Boulogne,’ I announced proudly to my friends. I described my outing with such gaiety and incoherence that Zaza cast me a suspicious look: ‘What’s the matter with you this morning?’ she asked. I was happy.
When Jacques rang at our door the next week my parents were out; when that happened, he would usually joke with my sister and me for a few moments and then take himself off. But this time he stayed on. He recited one of Cocteau’s poems and gave me advice about what I should read: he rattled off a score of names I had never heard before and recommended in particular a novel called, if I had heard aright, Le Grand Môle. ‘Come round to the house tomorrow afternoon and I’ll lend you some books,’ he told me as he left.
It was Élise, the old housekeeper, who opened the door to me. ‘Jacques isn’t in, but he’s left some things in his room for you.’ He had scribbled a note: ‘Please excuse me, Sim old thing, and take these books.’ I found on his table a dozen volumes bound in paper covers whose colours were as sharp and fresh as those of boiled sweets: pistachio green Montherlant, a strawberry red Cocteau, lemon yellow Barrès, Claudels and Valéry in snowy white with scarlet letterpress. Again and again through the tissue-paper wrapping I read the titles: The Potomak (Cocteau), Les Nourritures Terrestres (Gide), L’Annonce faite à Marie (Claudel), Le Paradis à l’ombre des épées, Du sang, de la volupté et de la mort (Montherlant). Many were the books that had already passed through my hands, but these did not seem to belong to the common run of things: I expected extraordinary revelations from them. I was almost startled to find that when I opened them they contained words that I was familiar with.
They did not disappoint me: I was disconcerted, dazzled, transported. Apart from the rare exceptions I have mentioned, I regarded works of literature as historical monuments which I would explore with more or less interest, which I sometimes admired, but which did not concern me personally. But now, suddenly, men of flesh and blood were speaking to me with their lips close to my ear; it was something between them and me; they were giving expression to the aspirations and the inner rebellions which I had never been able to put in words, but which I recognized. I skimmed the cream of the Sainte-Geneviéve library; with fevered brow, my brain on fire, and my heart pounding with excitement, I read Gide, Claudel, Jammes. I exhausted the resources of Jacques’ private library; I took out a subscription to the ‘Maison des Amis des Livres’, in which Adrienne Monnier, in a long dress of grey home-spun, held court; I was so greedy for reading matter that I couldn’t be satisfied with the two-books-at-a-time rule: I would secretly slip half a dozen or so into my satchel; the difficulty was getting them back on the shelves, and I’m afraid I didn’t get them all put back. When it was fine, I would go and read in the Luxembourg Gardens; I would walk in the sun round the fountains in a state of exaltation, repeating phrases I liked. Often I would install myself in the reading-room of the Institut Catholique which offered me a quiet spot to read in only a few steps from home. It was there, seated at a black desk among pious students and seminarists in long robes, that I read, with tears in my eyes, the novel that Jacques loved above all others and which was called not Le Grand Môle but Le Grand Meaulnes. I found release in reading as once I had done in prayer. Literature took the place in my life that had once been occupied by religion: it absorbed me entirely, and transfigured my life. The books I liked became a Bible from which I drew advice and support; I copied out long passages from them; I learnt by heart new canticles and new litanies, psalms, proverbs, and prophecies and I sanctified every circumstance in my existence by the recital of these sacred texts. My emotions, my tears, and my aspirations were no less sincere on account of that: the words and the cadences, the lines and the verses were not aids to make-believe: but they rescued from silent oblivion all those intimate adventures of the spirit that I couldn’t speak to anyone about; they created a kind of communion between myself and those twin souls which existed somewhere out of reach; instead of living out my small private existence, I was participating in a great spiritual epic. For months I kept myself going with books: they were the only reality within my reach.
My parents cast black looks upon them. My mother divided books into two categories: serious works and novels; she considered the latter to be an amusement which, if not sinful, was at least frivolous, and blamed me for wasting on Mauriac, Radiguet, Giraudoux, Larbaud, and Proust time which would have been better employed studying the geography of Baluchistan, the life of the Princesse de Lamballe, the habits of eels, the soul of Woman, or the Secret of the Pyramids. My father, having cast a rapid eye over my favourite authors, pronounced them to be pretentious, over-subtle, queer, decadent, and immoral; he was indignant with Jacques for having lent me, among other works, Marcel Arland’s Étienne. My parents no longer had any way of censoring the books I read: but they often made explosive scenes about them. I was vexed by these attacks. The conflict that had been smouldering between us was beginning to leap into flame.
*
My childhood and adolescence had passed fairly smoothly; as year followed year, I felt surer of myself. But now it seem
ed that there had been a decisive break in the even course of my life; I would remember the Cours Désir, the Abbé, and my schoolmates but I could no longer recognize in myself the calm schoolgirl I had been a few months earlier; I now took more interest in my state of mind than in the world about me. I began to keep a private diary; I wrote this inscription on the fly-leaf; ‘If anyone reads these pages, no matter who it may be, I shall never forgive that person. It would be a cheap and ugly thing to do. You are requested to take heed of this warning, despite its ridiculous pomposity.’ In addition, I took the utmost care to keep it hidden from prying eyes. In it I used to copy out passages from my favourite books; there were self-communings and self-analyses in which I congratulated myself on the change that had taken place in me. Of what did that change actually consist? My diary gives very little indication; I passed over many things in silence, and I couldn’t see things in their proper perspective then. Yet on re-reading it, a few salient facts emerge.
‘I am alone. One is always alone. I shall always be alone.’ I find this leitmotif running right through my diary. But I had never really believed it. I sometimes used to tell myself proudly: ‘I am not as others are.’ But I seemed to see in my difference the proof of a natural superiority which would one day be acknowledged by everybody. I was no rebel; I wanted to be someone, to do something, to go on progressing, ever onwards and upwards, as I had been doing since I was a little child; therefore I had to get out of the everyday rut I was in: but I believed it would be possible to rise above bourgeois mediocrity without stepping out of my own class. Its devotion to universal values was, I thought, sincere; I thought I was authorized to liquidate traditions, customs, prejudices, and all kinds of political and theological particularism in the light of reason, beauty, goodness, and progress. If I established myself in life by writing a work which would do honour to humanity, I would be congratulated for having trampled conformity in the dust; like Mademoiselle Zanta, I too would be accepted and admired. I made the brutal discovery that I had been wrong from the start; far from admiring me, people did not accept me at all; instead of weaving laurel crowns for me, people were banishing me from society. I was filled with anguish, because I realized that what people were reproaching me for, even more than for my present attitude, was the future that lay ahead of me: I would always be ostracized. I couldn’t imagine the existence of environments other than my own kind; here and there a few individuals stood out from the common mass of people; but I never had a chance to meet any of them; even if I were to form one or two friendships they would never console me for the sense of exile I was already beginning to feel; I had always been made much of, and looked up to as the centre of excited comment; I loved being loved: the bleakness of my future terrified me.