I also know that he daily performs that disconcerting miracle of appearing to one man like a hard worker who thinks only of his profession; and, to one woman, like a seductive, unscrupulous debauchee; to another woman, a paternal lover who spices up a brief infatuation with a pleasing hint of incest; to yet another, the weary, disillusioned, aging artist who’s adorning his declining years with a delicate love affair; there are even women to whom he’s quite simply a kindly libertine, still as sturdy and raunchy as you’d like; and then there’s the highborn goose who’s really fallen for him, and whom Adolphe Taillandy whips, tortures, scorns, and takes back again with all the literary cruelty of an “artist” in a fashionable novel.
That very same Taillandy, without transition, slips into the guise of the no less conventional, but more outmoded, “artist” who, in order to subdue the final resistance of a little lady who’s married, with two children, tosses away his sticks of pastel, rips up his sketch, weeps real tears that moisten his Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, and puts on his slouch hat to run and drown himself in the Seine.
There are many other Taillandys as well whom I’ll never know—not to mention one of the most horrible ones: Taillandy the businessman, Taillandy the sharper and financial adventurer, cynical and brutal or plain and elusive, depending on what the matter in hand calls for . . .
Among all those men, which is the real one?
I humbly state: I have no idea.
I don’t think there’s a real Taillandy . . . One day that balzacian genius of lies suddenly ceased to drive me to despair, or even to arouse my interest.
For me he was once a sort of frightening Machiavelli . . . maybe he was only a quick-change artist like Fregoli.
Besides, he’s still at it.
Sometimes I think about his second wife, with tepid pity . . . Is she still blissfully and lovingly nurturing what she calls her victory over me?
No, by now she’s beginning to discover, terrified and powerless, what kind of man she married.
God, how young I was, and how I loved that man!
And how I suffered! . . .
This isn’t a cry of pain or a vindictive lament—no, I sometimes utter it with a sigh, just as if I were saying,
“If you only knew how sick I was four years ago!”
And when I admit,
“I was so jealous, I wanted to kill and die,” it’s in the manner of those who relate,
“I ate rats during the 1870 siege . . . ” They recall it, but they’ve kept only the bare memory of it.
They know they ate rats, but they can no longer work up the shiver of horror or the fever of famine.
After he began to cheat on me, after the rebellions and submissions of a young loving wife who stubbornly went on hoping and living, I had started to suffer with unmanageable pride and obstinacy, and to write.
Merely for the pleasure of taking refuge in a past that was not so far away, I wrote a short rural novel, The Ivy on the Wall, as attractive, plain, and clear as the ponds back home, a chaste little novel of love and marriage, slightly naive and very charming; it enjoyed an unexpected success far beyond its merits.
I came across my photo in all the picture magazines, Modern Life awarded me its annual prize, and Adolphe and I became “the most interesting couple in Paris,” the couple that gets invited to dinner and is pointed out to prominent foreigners . . . ”You don’t know the Taillandys?
Renee Taillandy possesses a very pretty talent.”
“Oh, and he?” “He . . . oh, he’s irresistible!”
My second book, Alongside Love, sold much less well.
All the same, in giving birth to it, I had tasted the sensuous joy of writing, that patient struggle with sentences, which unbend and curl up like a tamed animal, that motionless waiting period and that lying in wait which finally “charms” the words . . . My second volume sold poorly. But it was able to gain for me—what’s the expression? oh yes!—“the esteem of men of letters.”
As for my third, The Birdless Forest, it fell on its face and never got up again.
That one is my favorite, my own “unknown masterpiece” . . . It was considered to be rambling and confused, and incomprehensible, and too long . . . Even now, I love it when I open it, I love myself in it with all my heart.
Incomprehensible?
Maybe for you.
But for me its warm darkness is illuminated; for me, certain phrases are enough to recreate the fragrance and color of things I’ve experienced, phrases as resonant, full, and mysterious as a shell in which the sea sings; and I think I’d like it less if you liked it, too . . . Rest assured!
I’ll never write another book like that one; I wouldn’t be able to.
Other tasks, other concerns occupy me right now, especially the need to earn my keep, to trade my gestures, my dancing, the sound of my voice for hard cash . . . I acquired the habit of it and the taste for it quickly, with that very feminine appetite for money.
I’m earning my keep, it’s a fact.
When things are going right, I tell myself over and over, happily, that I’m earning my keep!
Vaudeville, in which I became a mime, a dancer, and even an actress occasionally, has also made me—surprised as I was to find myself counting, haggling, and bargaining—an honest but tough little businesswoman. It’s a profession that the least gifted woman learns quickly when her freedom and her life depend on it . . .
Nobody was able to understand why we separated.
But, before that, would they have at all understood my patience, my long, cowardly, and complete obligingness?
Unfortunately, it isn’t only the first forgiveness that hurts . . . Adolphe soon learned that I belonged to the best, the true breed of women: having forgiven him the first time, I became, by way of a skillfully managed development, a woman who suffers and then accepts her suffering . . . Oh, what a learned teacher I had in him!
How carefully he meted out indulgence and demandingness! . . .
When I displayed too much rebelliousness he even went so far as to hit me, but I think he had very little desire to do so.
A man who’s carried away by rage doesn’t beat you as well as that, and he hit me every so often merely to bolster his prestige.
At the time of our divorce, people weren’t far from putting all the blame on me in order to exonerate “handsome Taillandy,” who was only guilty of being attractive and playing around.
I came very close to being intimidated and to giving in, restored to my customary submissiveness by all the brouhaha concerning us . . .
“What? He’s been cheating on her for eight years, and she’s only just now thought of complaining! . . . ”
I received visits from authoritarian, lofty friends who know “what life is all about”; I had visits from elderly relatives, whose most serious argument was:
“Dear girl, what do you want? . . . ”
What did I want?
Basically, I knew very well.
I was sick and tired of that existence.
What did I want?