It’s also too fine – almost indecently fine!
On Thursdays and Sundays I go off all alone to meet my First Communion partner, my little Claire, who’s heavily embarked on an absurd adventure with the Secretary at the Town Hall who doesn’t want to marry her.
From all accounts, there’s an excellent reason that prevents him!
It seems that, while he was still at college, he underwent an operation for some peculiar disease, one of those diseases whose ‘seat’ is never mentioned, and people say that, if he still wants girls, he can never again ‘satisfy his desires’.
I don’t understand awfully well, in fact I don’t really understand at all, but I’m sick and tired of passing on to Claire what I’ve vaguely learnt.
She turns up the whites of her eyes, shakes her head, and replies, with an ecstatic expression:
‘Oh, what does that matter, what does that matter?
He’s so handsome, he has such a lovely moustache and, besides, the things he says to me make me quite happy enough!
And then, he kisses me on the neck, he talks to me about poetry – and sunsets – whatever more d’you expect me to want?’
After all, if that satisfies her …
When I’ve had enough of her ravings, I tell her I’m going home to Papa so that she’ll leave me on my own.
But I don’t go home.
I stay in the woods and I hunt out a particularly delicious corner and lie down there.
Hosts of little creatures scamper over the ground under my nose (they even behave extremely badly sometimes, but they’re so tiny!) and there are so many good smells there – the smell of fresh plants warming in the sun … Oh, my dear woods!
I arrived late at school (I find it hard to go to sleep: my thoughts start dancing in my head the moment I turn out the lamp), to find Mademoiselle Sergent at the mistress’s desk, looking dignified and scowling, and all the girls wearing suitable prim, ceremonious expressions.
Whatever did all that mean?
Ah, the gawky Anais was huddled over her desk, making such tremendous efforts to sob that her ears were blue with the exertion.
I was going to have some fun!
I slid in beside little Luce, who whispered in my ear:
‘My dear, they’ve found all Anais’s letters in a boy’s desk and the master’s just brought them over for the Headmistress to read!’
She was, indeed, reading them, but very low, only to herself.
What bad luck. Heavens, what bad luck!
I’d cheerfully have given three years of Antonin Rabasten’s life to go through that correspondence.
Oh! would no one inspire the Redhead to read us two or three well-chosen passages out loud?
Alas, alas, Mademoiselle Sergent had come to the end … Without a word to Anais, who was still hunched over the table, she solemnly rose and walked over, with deliberate steps, to the stove beside me. She opened it, deposited the scandalous papers, folded in four, inside; then she struck a match, applied it to the letters, and closed the little door.
As she stood up again, she said to the culprit:
‘My compliments, Anais, you know more about these things than many grown-up people do.
I shall keep you here until the exam, since your name is entered for it, but I shall tell your parents that I absolve myself from all responsibility for you.
Copy out your problems, girls, and pay no more attention to this person who is not worth bothering about.’
Incapable of enduring the torture of having Anais’s effusions burn, I had taken out the flat ruler I use for drawing while the Headmistress was majestically declaiming. I slipped the ruler under my table and, at the risk of getting caught, I used it to push the little handle that moved the damper.
No one saw a thing: perhaps the flame, thus stifled of draught, would not burn everything up.
I should know when class was over.
I listened; the stove stopped roaring after a few seconds.
Wouldn’t it soon strike eleven?
I could hardly keep my mind on what I was copying, on the ‘two pieces of linen which, after being washed, shrank 1/19 – in length and 1/22 – in breadth; they could have shrunk considerably more without my being interested.
Mademoiselle Sergent left us and went off to Aimee’s classroom, no doubt to tell her the good story and laugh over it with her.
As soon as she had disappeared, Anais raised her head.
We stared at her avidly: her cheeks were blotched and her eyes were swollen from having been violently rubbed, but she kept her eyes obstinately fixed on her exercise-book.
Marie Belhomme leant over to her and said with vehement sympathy:
‘I say, old thing, I bet you’ll get a fearful wigging at home.
Did you say lots of awful things in your letters?’
Anais did not raise her eyes but said out loud so that we should all hear:
‘I don’t care a fig, the letters weren’t mine.’
The girls exchanged indignant looks: ‘My dear, would you believe it! My dear, what a liar that girl is!’
At last, the hour struck.
Never had break been so long in coming!
I dawdled over tidying my desk so as to be the last one left behind.
Outside, after having walked fifty yards or so, I pretended I’d forgotten my atlas and I left Anais in order to fly back to school:
‘Wait for me, will you?’
I dashed silently into the empty classroom and opened the stove: I found a handful of half-burnt papers in it which I drew out with the most tender precautions.