Pity for Women Read online

  He debated for a moment whether to arrange a meeting with the young woman next day in order to pleasure her? But would he be able to recapture the feeling he now had for her? Suddenly, Andrée's ridiculous remark came back to him: 'You've no idea what a woman's will-power can do,' and at once the problem was settled; for there still remained all the reasons he had had for the past five years against going to bed with her, with the added irritation of remarks such as this. Nevertheless he no longer felt the same desire to torture her. The idea of staging a melodramatic cat-and-mouse act ultimately repelled him as being too facile and vulgar. He decided, therefore, to bring matters to an end without more ado. 'Forgive this interruption, but it's now five thirty. I must warn you that my landlady is calling at six o'clock. If there's anything you particularly want to say to me ….'

  'But isn't it you, Costals, who have something to say to me?'

  'Me? What would I want to say to you?' He saw Andrée's face harden in an instant, like the faces of those women who, after swaggering into the police-station with their tawdry jewellery, are told by the superintendent that he will have to detain them. His good genius tapped him on the shoulder: 'Don't be unkind.' 'Why not? I'll be nice to the other one in a moment.' 'What about this one?' 'Another time.'

  'Your attitude towards me is a perpetual insult, and there are times when I wonder how I ever managed to put up with it.... '

  'I've often wondered about that myself. But it's surprising what women will put up with from a man.... '

  'Of course, when they're in love. But you're only interested in abusing your power. The life of a man like you is dreadful, monstrous!'

  'A writer worthy of the name is always a monster.'

  'Taking advantage of certain people and thwarting the others. Never in tune with other people. Destroying everything in the germ. Your life is one long series of abortions - your own, and those you inflict on others. Have you forgotten what you once wrote to me? "It's too easy to make women unhappy. I leave that to the gigolos"?'

  'That "once" was a long time ago. It was at the time when you yourself wrote to me: "A girl is never the first to tire of platonic love." Besides, you're intelligent enough for it to be worth while making you unhappy. You can make use of your suffering.'

  'No, no, don't you believe it! I'm not intelligent enough.'

  'But to suffer because one loves: isn't that a kind of happiness? What if your suffering ceased? Wouldn't you miss it?'

  'It's easy for you to talk.'

  'I don't know, it's the sort of thing women say.'

  Now she was afraid of him, with a sort of animal fear, the fear one has of a madman when one is locked in the same room with him and has seen a murderous glint in his eyes. Frantically she sought to placate him.

  'Please don't try to be cruel, Costals. It doesn't come naturally to you - you have to force yourself.' (She was trying to persuade him that he was kind, just as other women tried to persuade him that he was 'a Christian at heart'.) 'Is having loved you my crime?'

  'Why yes! '

  'Why no!' she said vehemently. 'Why must you take revenge on me? I've never done you any harm, and I've suffered a great deal from you. My anger was only a form of inverted misery. I paid for it as I paid for my sulks - which you didn't even notice. I beg you not to destroy this pitiful peace of mind so painfully acquired after three months of struggles and tears. I said to you once: "Rather than this silence and this uncertainty, bludgeon me until I have the strength to escape from you." Now, I say: "No, for pity's sake, spare me these blows." What would I have left of you, if you were no longer even kind to me?'

  That she was afraid of him gave Costals no pleasure. All he wanted was to be able to make her suffer with a clear conscience.

  'You admitted the other day that your love was not up to much, since you preferred your happiness to mine. For once, I ask you to prefer my happiness. Let me make you suffer. Then I shall love in you the pain I have caused. In this way I shall become part of you, and so love you. For five years you have given me the pleasure of resisting you; now give me the pleasure of being cruel to you. Women always refuse to recognize the degree of falsehood, calculation, weariness and charity in the love men bear them. With me you will see it all. And it will do you good! It will teach you something about life. You see, the important thing is not to let life stagnate. Life is always kind to the virile.'

  'But who said I was virile? Is it my business to be virile? I'm a woman, damn it, a woman, a woman!'

  'Still, women have a sure way of preventing themselves from suffering.'

  'What?'

  'Looking at themselves in a mirror when they're unhappy. They'd change their expression at once. And there's another recipe for automatically putting an end to your suffering. That is to try and imagine what you will be like in five years' time. You know perfectly well that, in five years' time, you will have ceased to love me, and that the whole of this episode will seem to you as ludicrous as the items they print in the newspapers under the heading "A Hundred Years Ago". A new sand-hill piles up and buries the old one. Just put yourself in the place of Andrée Hacquebaut at thirty-five. It only needs a little imagination.'

  She was about to answer - to explode - when a sort of centipede appeared on the table and began to saunter nonchalantly around. She had a horror of such creatures.

  'Kill that ghastly thing!'

  'Why? It hasn't done me any harm.'

  'What about me? Have I done you any harm?'

  She crushed the insect with a newspaper. He gave her a nasty look.

  'Mademoiselle Hacquebaut, you exhaust me. The other day I was in a kitchen with a little girl who made me very happy. Being happy, I wanted you to be happy too, and that is why I wrote to you. Last night, at half past nine, you came and banged on my door like a drayman. I was with that same little girl: everything had been arranged so that I should make a woman of her that night. And you dislocated the whole thing. However, since you had come because of me, I did not want your journey to have been in vain, and I made this appointment with you. We might have had a good hour and a half in which to talk pleasantly, if you had not contrived to turn up a quarter of an hour late. Now I really don't know where all this is getting us.'

  'What are you after? Are you trying to make me so sick of you that I shall leave you in peace? So that's why you brought me back! To tell me of all your filthy goings-on with a scullery-maid! It's just as I always said: you're incapable of loving your equals.... '

  'I'm not interested in equality in love because it's the child that I look for in a woman. I can't feel either desire or tenderness for a woman who does not remind me of a child.'

  'That way you'll end up in gaol as a satyr.'

  'Satyriasis is only an over-developed form of masculinity.'

  'And so this is your "goodwill" - the goodwill you spoke about in your letter! This moral trap you set for me, carefully prepared as you prepare everything.... Well, did you or did you not emerge from your peaceful existence to write to me: "Opportunity not to be missed"?'

  'That was a joke.'

  'When Nero hurled himself at one of his courtiers with a dagger, and missed, he used to laugh and say it was a joke.'

  'Oh God! Have we got to Nero now?' He heaved an exasperated sigh, pressing his fingers against one of his eyelids. 'I can't help it if I like joking, can I? Life has infinite charm as soon as you stop taking it seriously. But you women are all the same; you always think I'm joking when I'm not, and that I'm not joking when I am.'

  'Why won't you admit that what you wanted to do was to watch the effect of your refined tortures on me minute by minute, to watch my thoughts and feelings struggling inside me, just as you might watch ants or Martians devouring each other while you, with your horror of getting involved, keep well away from it all. You like to have me within reach, as a cannibal chief keeps his favourite white man, cutting himself a slice from time to time.... Oh, yes, it's a splendid thing, your pity for women! What would it be like if you ha
dn't any? The pity one feels for a chicken just before wringing its neck.'

  'I admit that, on occasion, I've behaved like a bit of a charlatan towards you. But not now. A while ago, yes, I wanted to make you suffer, and I even asked you to allow me to do so. But not now. At this moment, I feel very sympathetic towards you.'

  Then she saw something which seemed to her extraordinary. She saw an expression both deep and solemn appear in Costals' eyes, and the word 'fraternal', that once she had loved to repeat to herself in thinking of him, rose to her lips as the one word which could describe what she felt towards him at that moment. But the expression quickly faded.

  'Do you believe I could ever be generous towards you?' he asked, wishing to give her a false hope.

  'I can no longer believe in you or in anything that comes from you. You have deceived me too often, wilfully misled me. Oh, men, men! Pits of horror and mystery and utter inconsistency as opposed to women, even the least stupid and the least affectionate of whom can do nothing but love, can do nothing but spend their lives returning good for evil!'

  'Perhaps rather less is demanded of them. As for men's inconsistency. ... Men are more inconsistent than women because they're more intelligent.'

  'Oh, you and your intelligence! All I say is this: if, as you pretend, you have the smallest spark of feeling for me, then save me. Save me, Costals. To you it means nothing, to me it means life itself. And surely I have a right to live!'

  She was only a few inches away from him, and her eyelids were now closed. She stood thus, with lowered lids, like someone expecting a blow - a little wraith-like, with her great hollow eyes, and burning with the desire to abandon herself. The only sound was the faint patter of sparrows' feet on the sky-light. Then, as Costals said nothing (and although she had not seen him raise his eyebrows when she said 'Surely I have a right to live', as if to say: 'Is it so important?') she moved away a few steps, her head bowed, saying in an odd voice: 'I'm sorry, I've got a speck of dust in my eye.' She turned to the wall and dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief, silently (no snuffling). Costals waited for her to stop crying, endless though it seemed. 'There's still time,' he thought. 'One word, and I could make her madly happy.' But he said nothing, and she came back to the table. Then he took a step towards her. Suddenly his eyes fell on Andrée's right hand, and he saw what he had not seen before: while all her other nails were long and pointed, the nail of the middle finger of her right hand was cut short. He looked up at the dark rings under the girl's eyes, and his eyelids flickered with the gust of desire that swept over him. But it was too late.

  'Did you break your nail?'

  'Oh no,' she said, 'it's nothing.' And quickly she closed her fist. Her head was bowed.

  'Off you go now, my dear. I think we've come to the end of what we have to say to each other.'

  He thought she might be armed, and was going to kill him, or at least slap his face, and in order to be able to ward off the blow, he moved still closer to her, as modern bull-fighters stick close to the bull's flank in order to be 'inside' a blow from its horns. She raised her head, looked surprised, and stared at him motionless, with her bruised eyes. He realized meanwhile that she did not intend to kill him, that the idea had not even crossed her mind, and he thought: 'Really, these Frenchwomen!'

  'Costals, I shall probably never see you again. I just want you to answer one question: are you aware of what you're doing?'

  'What, me? That's a good one. If I weren't aware, I wouldn't be guilty.'

  'What do you mean by that? Am I to understand that you want to be guilty?'

  Without answering, he took her gently by the arm, and opening the door, escorted her along the short garden path to the door that led into the avenue. (There was a wing-shaped cloud floating in front of them.) 'Shall I kiss her on the forehead before throwing her out?' The reasons for and against such a gesture were equally balanced. The door-bell had been out of order for some time: it was not supposed to ring when the door was opened from the inside, but in fact, about every other time, it did. 'If it rings, I shall kiss her.' He opened the door. Silence. A twittering of birds, weaving a trellis of song above their heads. She went away.

  He closed the door. He had an intuition that she would come back, that she would knock, that something would happen. But no, nothing: he had never had any luck with his intuitions. Back in the studio, he listened a moment longer, then went upstairs to the columbarium.

  'Well, my little one, what did you think of all that?'

  Solange was still standing behind the curtain in the attitude she had adopted for eavesdropping. And she looked at Costals with perplexed and feverish eyes. Her cheeks were flushed, too, as when he switched on the light after covering her with kisses for hours (that face of hers, a little swollen by his kisses), although today he had only kissed her three or four times, and that an hour and a half ago. And her hair was somewhat wild, because she had not wetted it that morning.

  'Well,' he asked again, 'what did you think of that little scene? A real performance, eh?'

  'I wish I hadn't seen it. When you made me read some of that woman's letters, I felt sorry for her. But after seeing that, I have no pity left.'

  When he had got her to read some of Andrée's letters, she had been shocked by what she considered a lack of delicacy on his part, although he had not revealed the name of his correspondent. She had told him so, and his reply was: 'I'm taking the hat away.'

  ['To return to the conduct of the Comte de Guiche, the secretary also told me that, being present one evening at the Queen's card- table where the princesses and duchesses are seated around the Queen while the others remain standing, the Count became aware that the hand of a lady, his mistress, was busy in a place which modesty forbids me to name and which he was covering with his hat. Observing that the lady's head was averted, he maliciously raised his hat. Everyone present began to laugh and whisper, and I leave you to imagine the confusion into which the poor creature was thrown ...

  'He played similar tricks upon ladies daily, and yet they continued to seek his company.' - Primi Visconti: Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV.]

  'What do you mean?'

  'You'll be told when you're a big girl.'

  Now again she was shocked, out of some obscure sexual solidarity, that he had made her a witness to the humiliation of one of her kind. But such was her faith in him that it never occurred to her to wonder: 'Will this happen to me one day?'

  'It does one good to see you again. To see a woman who still lives in the world of reality. It's true, you're one of the few women I know who isn't crazy. Literary men attract crazy women as a lump of rotting meat attracts flies. We're landed with every kind of loneliness and repression: they want food for their dreams! You're the exception that proves the rule, and as an exception I love you.'

  'But then why bother to reply to them?'

  Ah, well! When I see flies on a piece of meat, I say to myself: "Everyone has to eat".'

  He had taken her in his arms, inhaling the warmth and freshness of her face and sliding a hand under her shoulder-strap (he was a real terror with shoulder-straps: he had only to look at them for them to snap), hungry to get back at last to something he really desired, and with the same ardour as if he were returning to her after a long absence; and he was indeed returning from a distant country, from the nether regions where dwelt the people who did not attract him. And it was as though he were about to give voice to the sort of little strangled yaps with which a dog will greet the return of its master, be he good or bad. He said to her:

  'I bring you my cruelty while it is still warm. This cruelty is my tenderness for you; they are one and the same thing. Kind? Cruel? It's all the same. As one quenches one's thirst with a cigarette. Water would refresh you, and the cigarette burns, yet they're the same thing. Don't try to understand. You saw that girl? There are masses and masses of them around! All the women I've refused because I didn't find them attractive. Drown the lot of them, that's all they deserve - like Carr
ier's executions in Nantes. And in fact that's how it usually finishes: rrrop... I open the trapdoor. Quite seriously, what she ought to do now is commit suicide, so that I'm really rid of her. I showed you that little episode so that you should see what happens to women I don't care for. There's a girl who started from nothing, who brought herself up entirely on her own in the worst possible conditions, who is cultivated, sensitive, intelligent, extremely gifted, and who has been in love with me for five years. If I weighed her merits against yours, yours would be non-existent. But I don't love her. I've never given her anything, never kissed her, never held her hand. Because I don't love her. You, on the other hand, come along, you attract me, and I give you everything: my attention, my affection, my sexual vigour, my intellect. Remember that, if one day you have reason to complain of me, which you surely will. You have had everything, for no good reason. There's no reason why I should have given everything to you rather than to others, no reason for such a preference or such a partiality. Where did I read that line that always runs through my head when I think of you?