Two women embracing will never be more to him than a depraved couple, and not the melancholy, touching picture of two weak creatures who may have taken refuge in each other’s arms to sleep there, to weep there, to flee from men who are often cruel, and to enjoy, rather than any pleasure, the bitter happiness of feeling themselves alike, insignificant, forgotten . . . What would be the use of writing, pleading my case, and arguing? . . .
My sensual friend understands nothing but love . . .
*** “April 24
“Don’t do it, don’t do it, I beg of you!
To show up here without any warning—that wasn’t your serious intention, was it?
“What I would do if I suddenly saw you coming into my dressing room, as you did five months ago at the Empyree-Clichy?
Of course, I’d hold onto you, have no doubt.
That’s the very reason why you mustn’t come!
I’d hold you, darling, clutched to my heart, to my bosom that you’ve caressed so much, to my lips, which are losing their bloom from no longer being kissed . . . Oh, how I’d hold you! . . .
That’s the reason why you mustn’t come . . .
“Stop alleging our mutual need to regain courage, to derive from each other the energy that a new separation would entail.
Leave me all alone to do my work, which you don’t like.
There are only twenty days left before I return; is that so bad?
Let me finish my tour with a rather military sense of duty and an honest working woman’s diligence, in which our happiness ought to play no part . . . Your letter frightened me, darling.
I kept expecting to see you come in. Be careful not to crush your beloved, don’t heap unforeseen sorrow or joy on her . . .
“RENEE.”
The canvas awning is flapping overhead, so that sunlight and shade alternate on the outdoor tables of this restaurant on the harbor where we’ve just had lunch.
Brague is reading the newspapers and, from time to time, gives a shout and talks to himself.
I don’t hear him, I hardly see him.
We’ve been used to each other for so long that we’ve done away with politeness, vanity, modesty, and every kind of lie . . .
We’ve just eaten sea urchins, tomatoes, and salt cod.
In front of us, between the oily sea lapping at the sides of the boats and the openwork wooden railing enclosing our tables, there’s a strip of sidewalk on which busy people who look as happy as idlers are parading by; there are fresh flowers, carnations tightly tied in bunches like leeks, their wet stems in green pails; there’s a stand loaded with black bananas smelling of ether and with shellfish dripping with sea water: urchins, sea squirts, two types of clams, and bluish mussels, amid lemons and little bottles of pink vinegar . . .
I cool my hand on the belly of the white water cooler, patterned like a melon, that is sweating on the table.
Everything here belongs to me and possesses me.
Tomorrow I won’t think I’ve taken this image away with me, but it seems as if a ghost of me, detached from me like a leaf, will remain here, a little stooped with fatigue, her transparent hand held out and resting on the side of an invisible water cooler . . .
I observe my ever-changing kingdom as if I had almost lost it.
And yet, there’s no threat to this easygoing roaming life, except for a letter.
It’s here in my little bag.
Oh, how my sweetheart can write when he wants to!
How clearly he makes himself understood!
Here, on eight pages, is what I can finally call a real love letter.
It has the requisite incoherence, the shaky spelling in two or three places, affectionateness, and . . . the proper masterfulness. A haughty masterfulness that settles me and my future, my entire short life.
Absence has done its work: he suffered without me, then he reflected and carefully planned for a lasting happiness; he proposes marriage to me just as if he were offering me a sunny field all enclosed with solid walls . . .
“My mother had some objections, but I’m letting her object. She has always done whatever I wanted.
You’ll win her over, and, besides, how much time will we spend with her?
You like to travel, my darling wife?
You’ll get to travel till you’re sick of it; the whole world will be yours, until you get to like only a small corner of it—ours—where you’ll no longer be Renee Nere, but Madame My Wife!
That kind of star billing will have to be enough for you! . . .
I’m already seeing after . . .”
What is he already seeing after? . . .
I unfold the thin onionskin sheets, which rustle like banknotes: He’s seeing after a change of address; because the third floor in his brother’s town house was never more than a suitable bachelor’s apartment . . . He has his eye on something on the fashionable Rue Pergolese . . .
In a burst of brutal hilarity, I crush the letter and exclaim:
“Well?
Is no one consulting me?
What’s my role in all this?”
Brague raises his head, then takes up his paper again, saying nothing.
His discretion, compounded of equal parts of reserve and indifference, isn’t so easily caught off guard.
I wasn’t lying when I wrote to Max two days ago:
“I see you so clearly now that I’m far from you!”
I hope I’m not seeing him too clearly! . . .