Hamond can’t help smiling, and it’s my turn to be melancholy:
“What torments have you flung me into again, Hamond?
Because it was you, admit it, it was you . . . Torments,” I add more quietly, “that I wouldn’t exchange for the greatest joys.”
“Ah!” Hamond exclaims in relief. “At least you’ve been rescued from that past which was still festering in you!
To tell the truth, I was sick and tired of seeing you gloomy, mistrustful, withdrawn into your memories and fears of Taillandy!
Forgive me, Renee, but I would have done some really nasty things to endow you with a new love!”
“Really!
Do you think a ‘new love,’ as you call it, destroys the memory of the first, or . . . reawakens it?”
Confused by the harshness of my question, Hamond finds nothing to say.
But he touched on my sore spot so clumsily! . . . And, besides, he’s only a man: he doesn’t know.
He must have been in love so many times: he no longer knows . . . His consternation arouses my pity.
“No, my friend, I’m not happy.
I’m . . . better or worse than that.
Only . . . I have no idea where I’m headed.
I need to tell you that, before I become Maxime’s mistress altogether . . .”
“Or his wife!”
“His wife?”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to!” My hasty response was blurted out before I could think things through—an animal leaps far away from the trap even before seeing it . . .
“That’s unimportant, anyway,” Hamond says in a casual tone. “It adds up to the same thing.”
“You think it’s the same thing?
Maybe for you, and for many men.
But for me!
Hamond, remember what marriage was for me . . .
No, I’m not talking about the infidelities, you don’t understand!
I’m talking about intimate life together, which makes so many wives into a sort of nursemaid for grownups . . . To be a married woman is . . . how shall I put it?
It means trembling if your lord’s cutlet is overcooked, if his mineral water isn’t cold enough, if his shirt is badly starched, his detachable collar flabby, or his bath too hot; it means taking on the exhausting role of a buffer between your lord’s bad moods, your lord’s stinginess, his greediness, his laziness . . .
“You’re forgetting his lecherousness, Renee,” Hamond softly interrupts me.
“I’m not forgetting it by a damn sight! . . .
The role of mediator, I was saying, between your lord and the rest of the human race.
Hamond, you have no way of knowing, you were married so short a time!
Marriage is . . . it’s:
‘Tie my cravat for me! . . .
Kick out the maid! . . .
Cut my toenails.
Get up and make me some camomile tea . . .
Prepare an enema for me . . .’
It’s:
‘Give me my new suit, and pack my valise, so I can hurry up and meet her . . .’ A housekeeper, a nurse, a nanny—enough, enough, enough!”
Finally I laugh at myself and my old friend’s long, shocked face . . .
“My heavens, Renee, how you do vex me with your urge to generalize!
‘In this district, all the servant girls are redheads!’
Women don’t always marry a Taillandy!
And I swear to you that, for my humble part, I would have blushed to ask a woman to perform any of those menial duties which . . . Just the opposite! . . .”
I clap my hands:
“Terrific! I’m going to learn all!
‘Just the opposite!’
I’m sure you didn’t have a match when it came to buttoning her boots or fastening the snaps of her tailored skirt! Unfortunately, not every woman can marry a Hamond! . . .”
After a silence, I resume, with genuine weariness:
“Allow me to generalize, as you call it, in spite of my one and only experiment, from which I still feel black and blue.