Pity for Women Read online

  'You see,' he said, 'the fact that you're a decent person is far more important than you probably imagine. For a long time now, a very long time, people have been working both inside and outside the country - and God knows with what calculated hatred - to make France a place where anyone with any decency must feel an exile. It's been a long and arduous business, because France was a good nation, basically sound. But at last it has been done. Dare I admit it? I who identified myself so passionately with my country in my youth and during the war, find that there are moments now when I not only feel no loyalty to it, but I even feel a violent need - which arises, and this is the serious part of it, from all that is best in me - to reject it entirely. Well, meeting someone like you, who are French, checks this impulse, and one thinks: "No, I can't desert" ... '

  'But there's nothing extraordinary about me. I can assure you that I know lots of girls like me, and there must be many more who are better.'

  'It's possible - although, believe me, I tried a good many before I found you: "maiden trials", in racing parlance. But the whole effort of society - perhaps the whole effort of mankind - seems directed at showing off worthless women and making them appear interesting. Women complain of being misjudged. Why then do they allow the worst of their sex to take the limelight? And why do they swallow so easily every male suggestion that tends to make them appear grotesque and degraded? Why such a failure to recognize their own interests? Nearly always when women debase themselves - by some hideous fashion, some obscene dance, some idiotic way of thinking or talking, it's men who have put them up to it. But why don't they resist? Everyone knows that a woman's body, when it's no longer young, tends to become a ridiculous and often repulsive object, a joy for cartoonists, whereas a man's body, as old age draws near, keeps in much better shape. Morally it's the same thing. When a woman is morally not much good, she becomes abominable: it's either one thing or the other. When a woman is ill-bred, lacks decorum, she is a harpy.'

  'I thought you only liked easy women.'

  'I like women with a sense of decorum who are easy at the same time.'

  'Oh, I see.'

  'Do you know what a harpy is? Well, I should say bitch, if I were the sort of man who used such expressions. All the women who put on airs, the vamps, the flirts, the "Hallo, darling!" women, all the women who get their pictures into the glossy magazines, all the women I include under the heading of women-who-want-their-faces-slapped are harpies. It is the harpies that all the theologians, the philosophers, the moralists have been aiming at for thousands of years in heaping scorn and anathema on women; but they were wrong in not indicating clearly that it was those women, and them alone, whom they condemned. Which brings me back to my question: why don't decent, sensible women defend themselves against these harpies? Don't they realize the harm the harpies do to them? Women's worst enemies are women. I was telling you just now that, when I meet the sort of woman I take you to be, I feel more kindly towards my country. But it goes further: I feel more kindly towards the whole of your sex and ready to treat it more honourably. For if men behave badly towards women it's because they're afraid of them, because they're obsessed by the harpies. Most of the caddishness, the desertions, broken engagements, etc., that women suffer from are due to the fact that, however sweet and loving a woman may be, the man thinks he can detect the harpy in her, either hidden or potential. So he turns on her, or else he bolts: either way he treats his natural companion as an enemy. And that is why, among your sex, the good pay for the bad.'

  'All the same, hasn't there ever been a harpy in your life?'

  'Never. And I take no credit for keeping them at bay, as I can't stand them anyway. Me, have anything to do with people like that? Never! As far as they're concerned at least, I shall die intact. I have never loved and I cannot love - more, I cannot bear - any woman who is not simple and straightforward. When I was out in Indo-China, I saw most of the officers - men with the power of life and death over hundreds of their fellows - manoeuvred like pathetic puppets by the worst kind of women, sewers of shame, hideous, vile, ravaged, but full of airs and graces and the same grotesque poses one sees in film stars (ah! the female spy must have a fine time in the French army!). And now and then I would say to one of these men: "How could you?" And he would answer: "There's no one else; I have to take what I can find." And I would say: "Marooned on a desert island, with no other woman in sight, I'd rather make love to a Great Ant-Eater than to one of those pretentious bitches, however ravishing." If I'd had my way in one of those colonial outposts, I'd have had them all deported or clapped into jail. I'd let my men go with native women, with men, with kids, with donkeys, with the leaf of the prickly pear, [The raquette of the prickly pear, much appreciated in the wilds of Africa (Author's note).] anything but those women. The harm they do in our colonies is unbelievable.'

  She saw that he was full of a sacred fire, and remembered reading in her history books how the revolutionaries, during the Terror, killed for the sake of virtue. Nevertheless she approved. Then, when Costals started joking again, she said she would go and make tea: such eloquence deserved it.

  'Have you any idea how to make tea?'

  'You don't know me.'

  'Come on, then, I'll teach you. And you'll see the cats playing the cello.'

  'Do your cats really play the cello?' he asked, for everything always seemed possible to him.

  'No, but they stick a paw straight up in the air when they're washing, and then they look as though they're playing the cello.'

  'That image doesn't seem quite accurate to me,' he said, like the honest craftsman he was in the art of writing.

  He followed her into the kitchen. The cats had preceded them, but they were not playing the cello. The black one must have had cold paws, for she had covered them with her tail. While the grey one doubtless had a cold tail, for she had placed her paws upon it. The black one opened her eyes as they came in. The grey wondered whether to do the same, then kept them closed, to show her contempt. A deep silence reigned in the kitchen, punctuated by the disproportionately loud tick- tock of a huge alarm-clock, which emphasized the silence instead of breaking it. The silence was even deeper here than in the drawing-room, for the kitchen overlooked the inner courtyard and the whole building on that side was wearing its Sunday look, meaning that it looked uninhabited. The kitchen windows, open on other days to disgorge the wail of gramophones and the chatter of maids, were closed. The drawn curtains were marked at the level of the hasp of the window-bolt with a dark patch which showed they had been pulled back over it all week and gave them the special crumpled look of housemaids' Sunday dresses.

  Solange put a kettle on the stove, and Costals picked up a volume of the Bibliothèque Rose entitled The Holidays, which was lying on the table. Solange said that she had lent it to the cook's daughter, who had come up from the country to spend a few days with her mother.

  'The Comtesse de Ségur! You can't imagine how well this book fits in with what I was thinking about you a moment ago. Of course, the "model little girl" is you! "Marguerite de Rosebourg" is you! All my childhood comes back to me with this little red book, and this time you're in it. How delightful!'

  Standing, they turned over the pages of the book which lay before them on the kitchen table.

  'The holidays were drawing to a close; the children loved each other more and more,' Costals read. 'Isn't it charming! I feel that you and I, too, love each other more and more.'

  'Oh, yes,' she said childishly, turning her face towards him. Then she leaned her head against his, as people are supposed to do when they are reading the same book. He pushed the curtain to, lest anyone should see them. The room became a little darker. Solange read:

  'Marguerite threw herself into her father's arms, and he kissed her so hard that her cheeks became quite crimson.'

  They laughed, for one day he had remarked that her face was all flushed with his kisses. And they kissed madly.

  'The divine Comtesse!' he exclaimed. 'Her books breat
he the very soul of the nobility. They make one drink to the dregs the bitter draught of low birth. All the good characters have titles, all the bad ones haven't. At least one knows where one is. Ah, ha! Here's a sentence which seems to concern someone I know: "I shall now ask Sophie to explain to us how the accident happened".'

  'Is it me that sentence is supposed to concern?'

  'Dear Rosebourg, wasn't there ever, in your girlish life, a little accident?'

  'Which one?' she asked, and he laughed, charmed by her innocence.

  The water began to sing in the kettle. Solange was about to take it off the stove, but he stopped her.

  'Let the water sing its little song; you can see it's enjoying it. It seems to me that I can hear a thousand different noises in this room which at first seemed so quiet, in the same way as one gradually begins to make things out in the dark as one's eyes get used to it. Can't you hear lots of tiny noises round you?'

  'Why, yes!'

  'What do you mean, "yes"? The cheek of it! Only writers are allowed to have any imagination. You deserve to be put to the test: tell me, please, what are the voices you profess to hear so clearly?'

  He put his face in his hands. She said:

  'There's the noise of the tap dripping into the sink - a dull, muffled sound. There's the noise of the water dripping from the bain-marie into the metal pan below - a quick, sharp sound.' ('The bain-marie!' he thought. 'Oh, ho! isn't she knowledgeable!') 'There's the noise of the water spitting from the kettle-spout on to the stove - like a locomotive getting up steam. There's the noise of the steam lifting the lid with something like a big sigh of contentment...'

  Smiling into the palms of his hands which still covered his face, he repeated: '... with a big sigh of contentment....'

  'All these noises occur at regular intervals. But then there are the free-lance noises. Can you hear the little tap-tapping of the chair on the tiles? That's the black cat scratching herself. The table's creaking: it's as though it were stretching its legs, lazily, because it's Sunday. In fact it's as though these noises only exist on Sundays, as if all the household things were having a day off. And the alarm-clock beats time for the whole little orchestra, as potbellied and self-important as a ballet-master from the commedia dell'arte.'

  'Well, well, old girl!' said Costals, lifting his face. 'This is certainly a day of revelations. Where do you get it all from? The gift of observation and the gift of imagery: the two fundamental gifts of the craft of writing, you have them both. And to think that I had quite made up my mind that you were totally lacking in imagination.... Oh! here's something else....'

  Catching a few drops from the tap in her palm, the girl sprayed them over the hot-plate of the stove, where they evaporated with the rustle of a silk dress. She said:

  'They're running, running, as if to escape their impending

  evaporation ... '

  Costals watched them with the look people have when they stare into the fire.

  'Yes, like soldiers running, running before being blown to smithereens by exploding shells. How they hate to disappear! And it's you who thought that up!' She made as if to stop. He implored her: 'Please kill a few more for me....'

  Again she scattered the tiny drops. And again she stopped. 'More! I could go on forever watching them vanish into oblivion.'

  'One would think you enjoyed it.'

  'It reminds me of the remark made by a general in Darius's army in the middle of a battle. Every time one of his men fell, he said: "One more fool the less." It's true he was a philosopher-general - a breed that shouldn't be encouraged.'

  Leaning over the table, she flicked through the book in the red and gold binding. 'I'm looking for a sentence in The Holidays which always used to move me when I was a little girl ... '

  In the silence, the genie of dripping water, the genie of boiling water, the genie of fire in the stove - a fire that never went out, as in the most ancient myths - the genie of the motionless cats and even the genie of this melancholy day, this strange winter day in the heart of summer, re-created the familiar world of Costals' early childhood, with its cats, its nursery rhymes, its kettle, its Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, its musical boxes, its New Year almanacs, Humpty Dumpty and La Tour prends garde, Cadichon and Kitty Darling, all the magic fairyland of Old France and Old England adapted for the edification of rather strait-laced little boys. And it was she, the most silent genie of them all, even when she spoke, it was this unobtrusive Cinderella ('If I were to disappear for a week, I don't believe my parents would notice, I take up so little room in the flat'), it was she who, with a wave of her wand, had reawakened this universe for him. It was this stranger who had reopened his nursery door and given him back the savour of his past.

  'There!' she exclaimed, 'I've found it! You know, the sentence I found so moving when I was a little girl. Paul says to Sophie: "So you had forgotten me?" And she answers: "Forgotten you, no, but you were asleep in my heart and I dared not wake you." '

  Costals glanced at the book and read the sentence himself. Why did he feel it was somehow familiar? He blinked in an effort to remember. Suddenly it came back to him, and a shiver ran through him. Long ago, his mother had said to him about those very lines exactly the same thing that Solange was saying now: 'When I was little this sentence touched me deeply. I used to whisper it to myself over and over again....'

  He had always been happy to talk of his mother to Solange. But this time.... To think that, at a distance of so many years, his mother and this young girl had been moved by the same words! He said so to Solange, without comment: his heart was gripped by something too strong for words. It seemed to him as if some mysterious sign had descended upon her.

  'What about the nightmare of the Maréchal de Ségur in the haunted house! Could it have frightened a boy? It used to terrify me ... '

  Silently they read the story together. Costals reached the place where the Marshal, as the spectre puts the point of its dagger to his breast, kisses the Star of the Holy Ghost on the ribbon of the Order and the spectre, seeing this gesture, spares his life. He reached that passage, and then a strange thing happened: his eyes filled with tears, and he began to tremble.

  Trembling, and his eyes full of tears, he said:

  'When I was a child and came to this passage in the book, the tears would come to my eyes as they have today. I cried because the Marshal had been saved for being brave. And because the ghost was not too wicked to be moved by his courage. And I too, like the ghost, am not so wicked that I can't still cry, even now. And I owe this to you! You have transformed me into what is best in me. You have brought me back into the atmosphere of my family, to the days when I was a good person, living among good people. Whereas now I live among literary men, and have become a humbug and a rake. What would my life be worth, but for the time I spent in the war? I should never have been a decent person, except when I was a child.' He bent down and placed his forehead on the open book. 'I'm doing as you do when you switch off the light, so that you may no longer see this face of mine, this man's face with all its unpunished crimes.'

  Standing against the sink, she was stroking his hair. He took her other hand and clasped it in his - so warm, like a handful of sand. Then he raised his head. He felt a terrible urge to tell her the truth about himself. It was an urge that he felt fairly frequently. It was nearly always into base souls that he cast this truth, for there it was more likely to disappear. But it could be cast into a pure soul; there was no rule against it. So he said to her:

  'If a certain lode in me were to be followed up, an unbroken succession of good actions would be found. If another, a succession of horrors. Not petty horrors, judged by this code or that - according to local customs - but really hideous things which the universal conscience can never forgive. Yet if I had not done these dreadful things, what an abyss of despair I should be in today, and above all tomorrow, when I am old. It is not from a desire for self-abasement that I accuse myself before you. It is because I want to see things as they
are, and for you, too, to see them as they are, without flinching, because that is what is good.... No, no,' he said, his eyes blurred, sensing that she wanted to speak, 'let me surrender to this spirit that sways within me. Let me be what I am!' he exclaimed passionately. 'What was I saying? Ah, yes, the lodes.... Well, sometimes, these lodes run parallel, but sometimes they cross, and when they do they interweave in arabesques, twining playfully about each other. And sometimes, too, it happens that they dissolve into each other, the best and the worst blended together, indistinguishable from one another. And in the evil I do there is a part I like and a part I dislike, just as in the good I do there is a part that I enjoy and a part that leaves me cold.' (One of the cats sneezed.) 'Certainly I enjoy evil, but I think I enjoy good even more intensely. However, I'm not so sure about that.... Do you remember greeting me one day with the question: "How's your morale today?" And I replied: "My morale is fine, but so's my immorale." [The pun works better in French, where the words are le moral and l'immoral (Translator's note).] That's what you must understand. Beware of preferring your own image of me to the reality. You must take me with all my "outbuildings", the stables and the latrines. However that may be, it is this pleasure in goodness which you have reawakened in me. And what you must know is this: that I've enjoyed and will go on enjoying the harm I have done and will do to others, but that never - and I say it in all solemnity - never will I enjoy the harm I may do to you.'