“And lily-of-the-valley . . . And foxgloves, too.
You know them?
They grow this high, and you put your fingers in their bells when you’re a kid . . .”
“I know . . .”
He tells his story badly, my woodcutter from the Ardennes, but I see so clearly what he tells!
“I go there in the summertime, by car.
I hunt a little, too, in the fall.
It’s Mother’s place, naturally.
Old lady Keep-Chopping!” he says, laughing. “She chops, chops, saws, and sells.”
“Oh!”
“But she doesn’t ruin the environment, you know!
She knows all about wood, she understands it as if she were a man, and even better!”
I listen to him with a new pleasure, glad that he’s forgetting me for a moment, that he’s talking like a worthy woodcutter about his mother’s forest.
I didn’t remember he was from the Ardennes, and he never took the trouble to tell me he loved his region.
Now I know why he looks like a ninny!
It’s because he wears his clothes a little as if they were his holiday clothes, with a lovable awkwardness he can never get rid of, like a handsome peasant in his Sunday best . . .
“Only, if you reject me, Renee, my mother will know immediately that I’ve come back to her place for a ‘cure,’ and she’ll be set again on seeing me married.
That’s what you’re exposing me to!”
“Go ahead and get married.”
“You don’t seriously mean that?”
“Why not?
Just because a personal experience was disastrous for me?
What does that prove?
You ought to get married, it would suit you very well.
You look like a married man.
You parade your bachelorhood in clothes that are like a young father’s, you’re delighted with the fireside, you’re as affectionate, jealous, stubborn, and lazy as a pampered husband, and basically despotic and a born monogamist!”
Stupefied, my admirer stares at me in silence, then leaps to his feet.
“Yes, I am all that!” he exclaims. “I am all that!
She said so!
I am all that!”
I curtly restrain his cries and gestures:
“Do be still!
What’s come over you?
Because you’re selfish, when all is said and done, and lazy, and a sit-by-the-fire, does that make you feel like dancing?”
Very docilely he sits back down opposite me, but his shepherd dog’s eyes stare at me with a victorious sagacity:
“No. It’s all the same to me if I’m all that you say: what makes me feel like dancing is that you know it!”
Ah, fool that I am!
Here he is, triumphant, glorying in my confession, the confession of my curiosity, if not of a keener interest . . . Here he is, conceited, trembling with the desire to reveal more of himself.
If he dared, he’d shout,
“Yes, I am all that!
So you’ve condescended to see me, while I was despairing of ever existing in your eyes?
Look at me again!
Discover all of me, invent weak points and laughable points in my character, heap imaginary vices on me . . . My concern isn’t for you to know me as I am: create your admirer the way you want him, and afterwards—just as a master artist touches up and improves the mediocre painting of a beloved pupil—afterwards I shall cunningly, little by little, make him resemble me!”
Shall I tell him my thoughts aloud, to confuse him? . . .
Careful!
I was just about to do another clumsy thing.
He won’t be confused, he’ll listen to his fortune teller with delight, and he’ll loudly praise that second sight which love grants! . . .
And what is he waiting for now?
For me to fall into his arms?
Nothing surprises an infatuated man.