Pity for Women Read online

  This dream made a profound, almost overwhelming impression on me. I felt more forcibly than ever before what a terrible blow it would be for me if I were no longer able to think well of you.

  There are several people for whom I feel a certain affection. But this affection, sincere though it is, goes only so far and no further. Like a motor-car which one knows has only so much horse-power in its belly. The affection which I feel for you, on the other hand, knows no obstacles, never reaches a limit. It belongs to another, infinitely higher category.

  The affection I feel towards those other people does not preclude my being able to do without them, my being able to tease them, or wound them even, or see them in distress without suffering from it or doing anything to relieve them. The affection I feel for you would preclude all that. Not once in my life has it occurred to me to try to upset you, or to let you be upset when it was in my power to prevent it, or even to keep you waiting for a pleasure which it was possible for me to grant you at once. For this belongs to another, infinitely higher category.

  When I emerge from the atmosphere generated by those persons and return to yours, everything, with you, seems so simple. That is because I really love you and nothing is simpler than loving, just as nothing simplifies things more.

  Nevertheless, my affection for you is not altogether unassailable. The affection I feel for the various other people is at the mercy of those people themselves, who may cease to deserve it, but also at the mercy of my moods, my lassitude, the exigencies of my work and my need for independence. The affection I feel for you is at the mercy of you alone - by which I mean that in one eventuality only could it weaken: if you became unworthy of it.

  It's a sort of miracle: for fourteen years (or let's say eight - since the age 'of reason'), I have never had anything to reproach you with, you have never done anything to offend me. I observe it all, as one observes the perilous feats of an acrobat, thinking: 'If only he can hold on to the end!' And I say to you, with all the force at my command: change, since in nature everything must change, and at your age especially one may change utterly within a fortnight; change, but in your essence remain what you are. Let there be a solid, steadfast nucleus in your nebula (ask Mlle du P. to explain what a nebula is; I would do so myself, only it bores me stiff, and I'd be at a bit of a loss to do so anyway). As you know, I allow you considerable scope for your idiocies, more so than any other father would allow his son; that is because, in my opinion, they do not affect what is really important. But in matters of importance do, I beg you, be on your guard. What I want passionately is to reach the point where it would be inconceivable that I should have any anxiety on your account, as regards your intrinsic quality; a point where you would represent complete calm and complete security to me; and that another living creature besides myself should represent complete calm and complete security to me is the most extraordinary thing I can imagine, since in effect it hardly belongs to this world. But it must be given to me, and by you and you alone: no one else means anything to me. You are the only person who has permanently engaged my affections, which are not easily engaged by other people. In fact, you are the only person I love, since the word can only be applied to that feeling which strictly extends to infinity, from which infinite demands can be made, with no more trouble than there would be in asking for water from the sea. Were the feeling I have for you to collapse or merely to fissure, it would mean the collapse or fissuring of the whole of myself. It would shatter me.

  When one truly loves someone, there is no need to tell him so: that can be left to inferior people. And as you know, I never do tell you. But that dream frightened me, and I felt the need to set something of it down for you on paper. Keep it (this may be asking a lot), and let us now move on to the absurd business of your bike... .[ The rest of this letter has no bearing on our story (Author's note).]

  to M. Jacques Picard [Costals' manservant.]

  chez M. Pierre Costals

  avenue Henri-Martin

  Paris

  Mlle Marcelle Prié

  Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs

  Paris

  20 July 1927

  Jacquot,

  I am here in the café like last Sunday, alone of course, since you have deserted me. I've been waiting for you for six days. What does your silence mean, love? If you didn't want to see me again, then why did you call me back? So you were just making fun of me, were you? I'm not having you throw me over like this, my boy. We've got to meet again, do you hear. Come on Tuesday at 10 p.m.

  Do you know when I first realized you had had enough of me? In the Underground, coming back from the boxing match. I wanted to kiss you and you kept turning your face away. So I said to you: 'Don't you love me any more, then?' 'Yes, but don't kiss me like that in the Underground. It's not right.' 'Are you ashamed?' 'Yes, I'm ashamed.' It was plain enough.

  Please be straight with me. I'm the victim of my passion for you. I wanted to love you, to guide you a bit in life. You're twenty and I'm twenty-five, but really the different in our ages is much bigger than that. Oh! I would have been prepared to do without marriage, since you didn't want it, but we could have been together, or just met on Sundays; it would have been better than nothing. Now you don't want it any more. You're free! But you'll regret it later. Your youth would have been all my happiness. But you never understood me, and now it hurts more than ever, my heart bleeds with loneliness and with all this waiting and not being able to make you see. Honestly, Jacques, do come one last time, and then I'll leave you to do exactly as you please.

  If you can't come tomorrow, I'll wait for you all week till Sunday.

  I kiss those eyes I used to love.

  Marcelle

  This letter remained unanswered.

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