The Mandarins. Simone Beauvoir de
too, had been subdued, for he didn’t insist. Almost immediately, he fell asleep against me; I also dozed off. The weight of his arm across my chest awakened me.
‘You’re here! Thank God!’ he exclaimed, opening his eyes. ‘I was having a nightmare; I always have nightmares.’ He seemed to be speaking from very far off, from the darkest depths of night. ‘Don’t you have a place where you can hide me?’
‘Hide you?’
‘Yes. It would be so wonderful to just disappear. Can’t we disappear for a few days?’
‘I have no place. And I can’t get away myself.’
‘What a shame!’ he said, and then asked, ‘Don’t you ever have nightmares?’
‘Not very often.’
‘I envy you! I always have someone near me at night.’
‘I have to leave soon, you know,’ I said.
‘Not right away. Don’t go. Don’t leave me!’ He grabbed me by the shoulders. I was a life preserver. But in what shipwreck?
‘I’ll wait till you fall asleep,’ I said. ‘Would you like to meet me again tomorrow?’
‘Yes, certainly. I’ll be at the café next door to your place at noon. Is that all right with you?’
‘Fine. Now try to sleep quietly.’
As soon as his breathing grew heavy, I slipped out of bed. It was hard for me to tear myself from the night which clung so tenaciously to my skin. But I didn’t want to arouse Nadine’s suspicions. Each of us had her own way of duping the other: she told me everything; I told her nothing. As I stood before the mirror, transforming my face into a mask of decency, I realized Nadine had been one of the main reasons for my decision to say yes to Scriassine, and I couldn’t help myself from holding it against her. Yet I really hadn’t the least regret for what I had done. You learn so many things about a man when you’re in bed with him, much more than when you have him maunder for weeks on a couch. Only I was far too vulnerable for this sort of experiment.
I was kept very busy all morning. Sézenac didn’t come, but I had quite a few other patients. I had only a vague impression of Scriassine, and I needed to see him again. Our night together was resting heavily on my heart, incomplete, absurd. I hoped that in talking to him we would be able to bring it to a conclusion, to save it perhaps. I was the first to arrive at the café, a small place, painted bright red, with highly polished tables. I had often bought cigarettes there, but I had never sat down. Couples were sitting in booths and talking quietly. A waiter appeared and I ordered a glass of ersatz port. I felt as if I were in a strange city; I no longer seemed to know what I was waiting for. Suddenly Scriassine burst into the café and walked hurriedly over to my table.
‘Sorry I’m late. I had a dozen appointments this morning.’
‘That makes it all the nicer of you to have come.’
He smiled at me. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Very well.’
He, too, ordered a glass of ersatz port and then leaned towards me. There was no longer any trace of hostility in his face. ‘I’d like to ask you a question.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Why did you agree so readily to go up to my room with me?’
I smiled. ‘I suppose it’s because I like you a little,’ I replied.
‘You weren’t drunk?’
‘Not at all.’
‘And you weren’t sorry afterwards?’
‘No.’
He hesitated. I gathered he was anxious to obtain a detailed commentary for his most intimate catalogue. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to know. You said you’d never spent a night like that before. Is that true?’
‘Yes and no,’ I answered with a slightly embarrassed laugh.
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, disappointed. ‘It’s never really true.’
‘It’s true at the moment; less so the next day.’
He swallowed the sticky wine in a single gulp.
‘You know what chilled me?’ I said. ‘There were moments when you looked so terribly hostile.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘That couldn’t be helped.’
‘Why? The struggle between the sexes?’
‘We’re not on the same side. I mean, politically.’
For a moment I was stupefied. ‘But politics has so little place in my life!’
‘Indifference is also a stand,’ he said sharply. ‘You see, in politics if you’re not completely with me you’re very far from me.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have asked me to go up to your room,’ I said reproachfully.
A sly smile wrinkled his eyes. ‘If I really want a woman, it’s all the same to me whether she agrees with my politics or not. I wouldn’t even have any qualms about sleeping with a fascist.’
‘But apparently it isn’t all the same to you, since you were hostile.’
He smiled again. ‘In bed, it’s not bad to hate each other a little.’
‘That’s horrible,’ I said, staring at him. ‘You’re quite an introvert, aren’t you? You can pity people and feel remorse for them, but I doubt if you could ever really like anyone.’
‘Ah! so you’re the one who’s doing the analysing today,’ he said. ‘Go on; I love being analysed.’
In his eyes I saw the same look of maniacal greed I had noticed the night before when he looked down at my naked body. I could not have tolerated it except in a child or a sick person.
‘You believe loneliness can be cured by force; but in making love, there’s no greater blunder.’
He got the point. ‘What you’re saying is that last night was a failure. Is that right?’
‘More or less.’
‘Would you be willing to begin all over again?’
I hesitated. ‘Yes. I don’t like to stop at a failure.’
His face hardened. ‘That’s a pretty poor reason,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘You don’t make love with your head.’
That was precisely my opinion. If his words and desires had wounded me, it was because they came from his head. ‘I think both of us do things too much with our heads,’ I said.
‘In that case, I suppose it’d be better if we didn’t try again,’ he said.
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
Yes, a second failure would have been even more disastrous than the first, and a happy outcome was inconceivable. We had absolutely no love at all for each other. Even talk was useless; there had been nothing worth saving and the whole affair, in any case, didn’t lend itself to a conclusion. We politely exchanged a few idle words and then I went home.
I hold nothing against him, and I hold hardly anything against myself. Besides, as Robert told me immediately, the whole thing was quite unimportant – nothing but a distasteful remembrance lingering in our minds and concerning no one but ourselves. But when I went up to my room, I promised myself I would never again attempt to remove my kid gloves. ‘It’s too late,’ I murmured, looking into the mirror. ‘My gloves are grafted to my flesh now; they’d have to skin me alive to get them off.’ No, it wasn’t only Scriassine’s fault that things turned out the way they did; it was my fault too. I had slept