Bonjour Tristesse
a novel by
FRANÇOISE SAGAN
TRANSLATED BY
IRENE ASH
FIRST ENGLISH EDITION MAY 1955
CONTENTS
PART One
1
2
3
4
5
6
Part Two
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
Adieu tristesse
Bonjour tristesse
Tu es inscrite dans les lignes du plafond
Tu es inscrite dans les yeux que j'aime
Tu n'es pas tout à fait la misère
Car les lèvres les plus pauvres te dénoncent
Par un sourire
Bonjour tristesse
Amour des corps aimables
Puissance de l'amour
Dont l'amabilité surgit
Comme un monstre sans corps
Tête desappointée
Tristesse beau visage.
P. ELUARD (La vie immediate)
PART One
1
A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness. In the past the idea of sadness always appealed to me, now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I had known boredom, regret, and at times remorse, but never sadness. To-day something envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, which isolates me.
That summer I was seventeen and perfectly happy. I lived with my father, and there was also Elsa, who for the time being was his mistress. I must explain this situation at once, or it might give a false impression. My father was forty, and had been a widower for fifteen years. He was young for his age, full of vitality and possibilities, and when I left school two years before, I soon noticed that he lived with a woman. It took me rather longer to realise that it was a different one every six months. But gradually his charm, my new easy life, and my own disposition led me to accept it. He was a frivolous man, clever at business, always curious, quickly bored, and attractive to women. It was easy to love him, for he was kind, generous, gay, and full of affection for me. I cannot imagine a better or a more amusing friend. At the beginning of the summer he even went so far as to ask me whether I would object to Elsa's company during the holidays. She was a tall red-haired girl, sensual and worldly, gentle, rather simple, and unpretentious; one might have come across her any day in the studios and bars of the Champs-Elysées. I encouraged him to invite her. He needed women around him, and I knew that Elsa would not get in our way. In any case my father and I were so delighted at the prospect of going away together that we were in no mood to cavil at anything. He had rented a large white villa on the Mediterranean, for which we had been longing since the spring. It was remote and beautiful, and stood on a promontory dominating the sea, hidden from the road by a pine wood; a mule path led down to a tiny creek where the sea lapped against rust-coloured rocks.
The first days were dazzling. We spent hours on the beach overwhelmed by the heat and gradually assuming a healthy golden tan; except Elsa, whose skin reddened and peeled, causing her atrocious suffering. My father performed all sorts of complicated leg exercises to reduce a rounding stomach unsuitable for a Don Juan. From dawn onwards I was in the water. It was cool and transparent, and I plunged wildly about in my efforts to wash away the shadows and dust of the city. I lay full length on the sand, took up a handful and let it run through my fingers in soft yellow streams. I told myself that it ran out like time. It was an idle thought, and it was pleasant to have idle thoughts, for it was summer.
On the sixth day I saw Cyril. He was sailing a small boat which capsized in front of our creek. We had a good deal of fun rescuing his possessions, during which he told me his name, that he was studying law, and was spending his holidays with his mother in a neighbouring villa. He looked typically Latin, and was very dark and sunburnt. There was something reliable and protective about him which I liked at once. Usually I avoided university students, whom I considered rough, and only interested in themselves and their own problems, which they dramatised, or used as an excuse for their boredom. I did not care for young people, but much preferred my father's friends, men of forty, who spoke to me with courtesy and tenderness, and treated me with the gentleness of a father or a lover.
Cyril was different. He was tall and sometimes beautiful, with the sort of good looks that immediately inspire one with confidence. Although I did not share my father's aversion to ugliness, which often led us to associate with stupid people, I felt vaguely uncomfortable with anyone devoid of physical charms. Their resignation to the fact that they were unattractive seemed to me somehow indecent.
When Cyril left he offered to teach me to sail. I went up to dinner absorbed by my thoughts and hardly joined in the conversation; neither did I pay much attention to my father's nervousness. After dinner we lay in chairs on the terrace as usual. The sky was studded with stars. I gazed upwards, vaguely hoping to see a sudden, exciting flash across the heavens, but it was early in July and too soon for meteors. On the terrace the crickets were chirruping. There must have been thousands of them, drunk with heat and moonlight, pouring out their strange song all night long. I had been told they were only rubbing their wing-cases together, but I preferred to believe that it came from the throat, guttural and instinctive like the purr of a cat. We were very comfortable. Only some tiny grains of sand between my skin and my shirt kept me from dropping off to sleep. Suddenly my father coughed apologetically and sat up.
"Someone is coming to stay," he announced.
I shut my eyes tightly. We were too peaceful, it just couldn't last!
"Hurry up and tell us who it is!" cried Elsa, always avid for gossip.
"Anne Larsen," said my father, and he turned towards me.
I could hardly believe my ears. Anne was the last person I would have thought of. She had been a friend of my mother's, and had very little contact with my father. But all the same, when I left school two years before and my father was at his wits' end about me, he had asked her to take me in hand. Within a week she had dressed me in the right clothes and taught me something of life. I remember thinking her the most wonderful person and being quite embarrassingly fond of her, but she soon found me a young man to whom I could transfer my affections. To her I owed my first glimpse of elegance and my first flirtation, and I was very grateful. At forty-two she was a most attractive woman, much sought after, with a beautiful face, proud, tired and indifferent. This indifference was the only complaint one could make against her: she was amiable and distant. Everything about her denoted a strong will and an inner serenity which were disconcerting. Although divorced, she seemed to have no attachments; but then we did not know the same people. Her friends were clever, intelligent and discreet; ours, from whom my father demanded only good looks or amusement, were noisy and insatiable. I think she rather despised us for our love of diversion and frivolity, as she despised all extremes. We had few points of contact: she was concerned with fashion and my father with publicity, so they met occasionally at business dinners; then there was the memory of my mother, and lastly my own determined efforts to keep in touch, because although she intimidated me, I greatly admired her. In short, her sudden arrival appeared disastrous in view of Elsa's presence and Anne's ideas on education.
Elsa went up to bed after making close enquiries about Anne's social position. I remained alone with my father and moved to the steps, where I sat at his feet. He leaned forward and laid his hands on my shoulders.
"Why are you so thin, darling? You look like a lit
tle wild cat. I'd rather have a beautiful fair-haired daughter, a bit plump, with china-blue eyes and ..."
"That's hardly the point," I said. "What made you invite Anne, and why did she accept?"
"Perhaps she wants to see your old father, one never knows."
"You're not the type of man who interests Anne," I said. "She's too intelligent and thinks too much of herself. And what about Elsa, have you thought of her? Can you imagine a conversation between Elsa and Anne? I can't!"
"I'm afraid it hadn't occurred to me," he confessed. "But you're right, it's a dreadful thought! Cécile, my sweet, shall we go back to Paris?"
He laughed softly and rubbed the back of my neck. I turned to look at him. His dark eyes gleamed, funny little wrinkles marked their edges, his mouth turned up slightly. He looked like a faun. I laughed with him as I always did when he created complications for himself.
"My little accomplice," he said. "What would I do without you?"
From the tender inflection of his voice I knew that he would really have been unhappy. Late into the night we talked of love, of its complications. In my father's eyes they were imaginary. He refused categorically all notions of fidelity and serious commitments. He explained that they were arbitrary and sterile. From anyone else such views would have shocked me, but I knew that in his case they did not exclude either tenderness or devotion; feelings which came all the more easily to him since he was determined that they should be transient. This conception of rapid, violent and passing love affairs appealed to my imagination. I was not at the age when fidelity is attractive. I knew very little about love.
2
Anne was not due for another week, and I made the most of these last days of real freedom. We had rented the villa for two months, but I knew that once she had come it would be impossible for any of us to relax completely. Anne gave a shape to things and a meaning to words that my father and I preferred to ignore. She set a standard of good taste and fastidiousness which one could not help noticing in her sudden withdrawals, her expressions, and her pained silences. It was both stimulating and exhausting, but in the long run humiliating, because I could not help feeling that she was right.
On the day of her arrival we decided that my father and Elsa should meet her at the station in Fréjus. I absolutely refused to go with them. In desperation my father cut all the gladioli in the garden to offer her as soon as she got off the train. My only advice to him was not to allow Elsa to carry the bouquet. After they had left I went down to the beach. It was three o'clock and the heat was overpowering. I was lying on the sand half asleep when I heard Cyril's voice. I opened my eyes: the sky was white, shimmering with heat. I made no reply, because I did not want to speak to him, nor to anyone. I was nailed to the sand by all the forces of summer.
"Are you dead?" he said. "From over there you looked as if you had been washed up by the sea."
I smiled. He sat down near me and my heart began to beat faster because his hand had just touched my shoulder. A dozen times during the past week my brilliant seamanship had precipitated us into the water, our arms entwined, and I had not felt the least twinge of excitement, but to-day the heat, my half-sleep, and an inadvertent movement had somehow broken down my defences. We looked at each other. I was getting to know him better. He was steady, and more restrained than is perhaps usual at his age. For this reason our circumstances—our unusual trio—shocked him. He was too kind or too timid to tell me, but I felt it in the oblique looks of recrimination he gave my father. He would have liked to know that I was tormented by our situation, but I was not; in fact my only torment at that moment was the way my heart was thumping. He bent over me. I thought of the past few days, of my feeling of peace and confidence when I was with him, and I regretted the approach of that wide and rather full mouth.
"Cyril," I said. "We were so happy. ..."
He kissed me gently. I looked at the sky, then saw nothing but lights bursting under my closed eyelids. The warmth, dizziness, and the taste of our first kisses continued for long moments. The sound of a motor-horn separated us like thieves. I left Cyril without a word and went up to the house. I was surprised by their quick return; Anne's train could hardly have arrived yet. Nevertheless I found her on the terrace just getting out of a car.
"This is like the house of the Sleeping Beauty!" she said.
"How brown you are, Cécile! I am so pleased to see you."
"I too," I answered, "but have you just come from Paris?"
"I preferred to drive down, and by the way, I'm worn out."
I showed her to her room and opened the window in the hope of seeing Cyril's boat, but it had disappeared. Anne sat down on the bed. I noticed little shadows round her eyes.
"What a delightful villa!" she said. "Where's the master of the house?"
"He's gone to meet you at the station with Elsa."
I had put her suitcase on a chair, and when I turned round I received a shock. Her face had suddenly collapsed, her mouth was trembling.
"Elsa Mackenbourg? He brought Elsa Mackenbourg here?"
I could not think of anything to reply. I looked at her, absolutely stupefied. Was that really the face I had always seen so calm and controlled? . . . She stared at me, but I saw she was contemplating my words. When at last she noticed me she turned her head away.
"I ought to have let you know sooner," she said, "but I was in such a hurry to get away and so tired."
"And now ..." I continued mechanically.
"Now what?" she said.
Her expression was interrogatory, disdainful, as though nothing had taken place.
"Well, now you've arrived!" I said stupidly, rubbing my hands together. "You can't think how pleased I am that you're here. I'll wait for you downstairs; if you'd like anything to drink the bar is very well stocked."
Talking incoherently I left the room and went downstairs with my thoughts in a turmoil. What was the reason for that expression, that worried voice, that sudden despondency? I sat on the sofa and closed my eyes. I tried to remember Anne's various faces: hard, reassuring; her expressions of irony, ease, authority. I found myself both moved and irritated by the discovery that she was vulnerable, Was she in love with my father? Was it possible for her to be in love? He was not at all her type. He was weak, frivolous, and sometimes unreliable. But perhaps it was only the fatigue of the journey, or moral indignation? I spent an hour in vain conjecture.
At five o'clock my father arrived with Elsa. I watched him getting out of the car. I wondered if Anne could ever love him? He walked quickly towards me, his head tilted a little backwards; he smiled. Of course it was quite possible for Anne to love him, for anyone to love him!
"Anne wasn't there," he called to me. "I hope she hasn't fallen out of the train!"
"She's in her room," I said. "She came in her car."
"No? Splendid! Then all you have to do is to take up the bouquet."
"Did you buy me some flowers?" called Anne's voice. "How sweet of you!"
She came down the stairs to meet him, cool, smiling, in a dress that did not seem to have travelled. I reflected sadly how she had appeared only when she heard the car, and that she might have done so a little sooner to talk to me; even if it had been about my examination, in which, by the way, I had failed. This last thought consoled me.
My father rushed up to her and kissed her hand.
"I spent a quarter of an hour on the station platform, holding this bunch of flowers, and feeling utterly foolish. Thank goodness you're here! Do you know Elsa Mackenbourg?"
I averted my eyes.
"We must have met," said Anne, all amiability. "What a lovely room I have. It was most kind of you to invite me, Raymond; I was feeling very exhausted."
My father gave a snort of pleasure. In his eyes everything was going well. He made conversation, uncorked bottles; but I kept thinking, first of Cyril's passionate face, and then of Anne's, both with the stamp of violence on them, and I wondered if the holidays would be as uncomplicated as my fathe
r had predicted.
This first dinner was very gay. My father and Anne talked of the friends they had in common, who were few, but highly colourful. I was enjoying myself up to the moment when Anne declared that my father's business partner was an idiot. He was a man who drank a lot, but I liked him very much, and my father and I had had memorable meals in his company.
"But Anne," I protested. "Lombard is most amusing; he can even be very funny."
"All the same, you must admit that he's somewhat lacking, and as for his brand of humour ..."
"He has perhaps not a very brilliant form of intelligence, but..."
She interrupted me with an air of condescension:
"What you call 'forms' of intelligence are only degrees."
I was delighted with her clear-cut definition. Certain phrases fascinate me with their subtle implications, even though I may not always understand their meaning. I told Anne that I wished I could have written it down in my notebook. My father burst out laughing:
"At least you bear no resentment!"
How could I when Anne was not malevolent? I felt that she was too completely indifferent, her judgments had not the precision, the sharp edge of spite, and so were all the more effective.
The first evening Anne did not seem to notice that Elsa went quite openly into my father's bedroom. She had brought me a jersey from her collection, but would not accept any thanks; it only bored her to be thanked, she said, and as I was anyhow shy of expressing enthusiasm, I was most relieved.
"I think Elsa is very nice," she remarked as I was about to leave the room.
She looked straight at me without a smile, seeking something in me which at all cost she wished to eradicate: I was to forget her earlier reaction.
"Oh yes, she's a charming girl . . . very sympathique," I stammered.
She began to laugh, and I went up to bed, most upset. I fell asleep thinking of Cyril, probably dancing in Cannes with girls.
I realise that I have forgotten an important factor —the presence of the sea with its incessant rhythm. Neither have I remembered the four lime trees in the courtyard of a school in Provence, and their scent; and my father's smile on the station platform three years ago when I left school, his embarrassed smile because I had plaits and wore an ugly dark dress. And then in the car his sudden triumphant joy because I had his eyes, his mouth, and I was going to be for him the dearest, most marvellous of toys. I knew nothing; he was going to show me Paris, luxury, the easy life. I dare say I owed most of my pleasures of that time to money; the pleasure of driving fast, of having a new dress, buying records, books, flowers. Even now I am not ashamed of indulging in these pleasures, in fact I just take them for granted. I would rather deny myself my moods of mysticism or despair than give them up. My love of pleasure seems to be the only coherent side of my character. Perhaps it is because I have not read enough? At school one only reads edifying works. In Paris there was no time for reading: after lectures my friends hurried me off to cinemas; they were surprised to find that I did not even know the actors' names. I sat on sunny café terraces, I savoured the pleasure of drifting along with the crowds, of having a drink, of being with someone who looks into your eyes, holds your hand, and then leads you far away from those same crowds. We would walk slowly home, there under a doorway he would draw me close and embrace me: I found out how pleasant it was to be kissed. In the evenings I grew older: I went to parties with my father. They were very mixed parties, and I was rather out of place, but I enjoyed myself, and the fact that I was so young seemed to amuse everyone. When we left, my father would drop me at our flat, and then see his friend home. I never heard him come in.