What about Max?
Again!
How long am I going to find that man underfoot?
What about Max?
What about Max?
So I only exist to worry about that nuisance of a playboy?
Truce, Lord, truce!
Enough fuss, enough romances, enough wasted time, enough men!
My poor woman, look at yourself, look at yourself!
You aren’t old, far from it, but you’re already a sort of old bachelor.
You have the obsessions of one, the grumpiness, the finicky sensitivity—enough to make you suffer, to make yourself unbearable. What are you going to do ‘in that galley’ . . . not even a galley, but a laundry boat, firmly moored to the bank of the Seine, where ancestral clothes are washed?
If you were at least capable of carrying on a nice little affair with that tall galoot, for two weeks, three weeks, or two months, and then saying goodbye!
We owe each other nothing, we’ve both enjoyed each other . . .
When with Taillandy, you should have learned how to leave people flat! . . .”
And I go on and on . . . I employ a crude, malicious ingenuity in insulting my lover and myself: it’s a sort of game in which I lash myself into saying true things that I don’t believe, or don’t believe yet . . . And this lasts until the moment when I notice that it’s raining cats and dogs: across the street, the roofs are streaming and their gutters overflowing.
A long, cold drop rolls down the pane and falls on my hand.
Behind me, the hotel room has become black . . . I’d feel cozy leaning on the shoulder of the man I was just insulting, calling him a nuisance of a playboy . . .
I turn on the ceiling light, and, to keep busy, I risk a temporary ordering of the writing desk; I open the blotter, between the cheval glass and the bouquet of narcissus; I try to achieve some semblance of a home, I wish for some hot tea and toast, for my familiar lamp with its pink shade, the barking of my dog, the voice of my elderly friend Hamond . . . A large white sheet of paper is there, tempting me, and I sit down:
“Max darling, yes, I’m coming back; I come back a little every day.
Can it be true that only twelve nights separate me from you?
Nothing is less certain: I feel as if I’ll never see you again . . .
How awful that would be!
How wise it would be! . . .”
I stop: isn’t that putting it too clearly? . . .
No.
Anyway, I wrote “would be,” and a man in love will never take a conditional mood too seriously . . . I can continue in the same reassuring fashion, I can risk melancholy generalizations and timid reservations . . . And since I nevertheless fear some sudden decision that could bring Max here in less than twelve hours, I don’t forget to drown the whole letter in a flood of sweet nothings that, unfortunately, carries me away . . .
What I’m doing here is a little revolting . . .
*** How time goes by!
Where are the Pyrenees with their blossoming cherry trees, the tall austere mountain range that seemed to be following us, sparkling with a snow that makes you thirsty, flecked with vertiginous shadows, split by blue abysses, and speckled with bronze forests?
Where are the narrow valleys, the green Spanish grass, and the wild orchids as white as gardenias?
Or the little Basque town square where the dark hot chocolate steamed?
How distant it is already, the icy torrent, full of mischievous charm, stirred up by the snowmelt, as transparent and milky as moonstones!
Now we’re leaving Bordeaux after giving five performances in three days:
“Fine town!” Brague was sighing in the station. “I had myself a little Bordelaise . . . and I don’t mean a mushroom sauce!
She was one of those half-pints you find by dozens on the Cours, see?
Only so high, with boobs, short legs, small, plump feet, and wearing so much damn mascara and powder, with hair so done up in curls, that I defy you to say whether they’re pretty or not.
They glow, they chat, they wiggle . . . they suit me to a T!”
He was exuding a calm happiness, and I looked at him with a hostility that was a little nauseated, the way I look at people eating when I’m no longer hungry . . .
The timorous springtime is fleeing before us.
It gets younger by the hour, and leaf after leaf, blossom after blossom, close up again as we head north once more.
In the sparser shade of the hedges, the April daisies have reappeared, along with the last faded violets . . . The paler blue of the sky, the shorter grass, and a sour dampness in the air create the illusion of being rejuvenated and going backward in time . . .
If only I could rewind the last few months, back to the winter day when Max first came into my dressing room! . . .
When I was small and just learning how to knit, they made me take out rows and rows of stitches till I found the little oversight I hadn’t been aware of, a dropped stitch, which the people in school called “an error” . . .
An error, that’s all my poor second romance will have been in my life, that romance which I called my dear warmth, my light . . . It’s here, right near my hand, I can grab it, yet I’m running away . . .
Because I will run away!
A premeditated escape is being organized way down in the depths of me, though I’m not yet taking a direct part in it . . . At the decisive moment, when I shall need merely to call, like a madwoman,
“Quick, Blandine, my valise and a taxi!” I shall perhaps be deceived by my confusion, but, dear Max, whom I tried to love, I confess here with the sincerest sorrow: from now on, everything is decided.
Except for this sorrow, haven’t I become what I used to be once again—that is, free, frightfully alone and free?
The transitory grace by which I was touched is withdrawing from me, since I refused to immerse myself in it.
Instead of saying to it,