My love, I do so love your letters and feel you so much with me. But I still need so much to see your face again, and to see a host of the tenderest little Erlebnisse passing over it. I love you passionately this evening — and even with a strange assortment of passions, o little unreal one! That’s because of the darkness, the Calvados and my fatigue. I find it pleasing, actually, so absurdly to rediscover that kind of anguish for you — o yourself, my absolute, my life — for you, my other self. Till tomorrow, my love.
I’ve had a note from the Boxers, with a little drawing by Lili representing the Boxer. It ends as follows: ‘In the firm hope of seeing you again soon’ — but he suggests times we might meet on 2 November exactly during my teaching hours (for I don’t think we’ll have any holiday).
Friday 27
My sweet little one. I went to bed yesterday night after writing to you and slept very badly — I was in an agitated state.
[...]
I’m going to call in at Gégé’s, to see if there was a letter from you in the 5 o’clock mail — they’re my daily bread and I can’t do without them. I love you today without any welter of passions — sensibly, calmly and joyfully. But I’m beginning to chafe about Emma, since the moment when I’ll know is drawing close — and I’m becoming aware that if the answer’s no, I’ll break down. I need you, my love
Your charming Beaver
[Paris]
Saturday 28 October [1939]
My love
Here are three letters arriving together from you — dated the 23 rd, 24th and 25th — I found them at the post office just now. How happy I am! The 25th is so recent — it’s really pleasing to be having Wednesday’s news already. One of the letters had been opened by the censors, but they were all lovely and intact, and so tender, my love — I’m very upset to think I saddened you by my own sadness. As I’ve said, that’s over now; I’ve got back to work and I’m calm. Regarding Emma, I still don’t know anything, which makes me very frustrated. And regarding your leave, I still feel no concrete joy; I don’t really believe in it, and lose myself in the details of how to manage things practically. Won’t it seem terribly shady if I vanish just before your leave? The best thing would be to say I’m going off to see you and will come back with you, because you’ve got only 5 days. I’m also wondering if I wouldn’t prefer to see you for 6 days, then leave you to Wanda for 3 days and see you again for 2 days. I’d like to spend the last moments with you, and I’d find it painful to know you were still in Paris but that for me it was over.
I just wrote all this, and then suddenly it came to me — I understood: more or less, with difficulty or not, I shall see you, I shall see you, I’ll fall asleep beside you, I’ll wake up beside you, I’ll walk through Paris holding your little arm and we’ll talk for hours, and hours, and even what with school and your parents there’ll be a long, long time for us. My dear love, I so want that, so need it! In a month I’ll see you — at worst. I love you so, my sweet little one.
[...]
I love you. I’m on edge because of Emma, but I’m wild with happiness when I think that I’ll see you for almost 8 full days. It’s almost all the same to me that you’ll be visiting your family, if it’s really only from 12.30 till 3, since that will partly overlap with my teaching periods - but all the same, if that could only be avoided! I’ll go and fetch your civilian clothes.
Goodbye, my love, my life. I kiss you passionately, and love you boundlessly.
Your charming Beaver
Please send the books to Bost, even if you don’t write to him.
[Paris]
Sunday 29th October [1939]
My love,
It’s late and I ought to go to bed, but instead I’m going to write you a long letter. I have a frantic desire to speak to you, and such a strong and — alas! — vain desire to hear you answer me! I love you, o yourself! All day I’ve been beset by countless memories which wring my heart. I’ve seen again in my mind’s eye a street in Pompeii, where we walked in bright sunlight; and a terrace in Tetouan, where you squeezed lemonade for me; and a dinner at the Louis XIV, where we talked about war; and a stopping-place in the Pyrenees, on the way up to Quillan, on a wet road. My sweet little one, each time I felt such an impulse towards you that my heart was bursting; but then it was checked there, unable to reach you, and the pain was terrible. I’m also beginning to imagine a room: I’m there, it’s 11 in the morning — or 9 at night — and my heart’s thumping; suddenly there’s a knock at the door and you come in. I feel my breath cut short when I imagine that really happening — and perhaps it’s going to be true. My love, I’m so overwhelmed by waiting. I want so very, very much to see you.
Yesterday evening after I’d written to you my sister came — it was about 6.30. We went and had dinner at the pancake house on Rue Pauline: as before, dumplings — which are delicious — and pancakes. Then we went to the Dôme. I’d brought your letters along in a bundle and began reading her long extracts. It was very enjoyable. It made almost two months of your life that I now rediscovered all in one go. I could remember almost everything, but all the same there were some details that stood out more clearly. I decided to buy a folder — but of a sophisticated type, with a kind of zip — and put all your letters into it, laid out nice and flat (since they all have the same format, except for one). That’ll make a real little book. How I loved you, my beloved, rereading all that!* I cast a little glance over the intimate passages en route. My little support, my dear life — you haven’t left me for an instant. How you’ve managed to stay with me! How precious and necessary that is to me!
We came home at about 10.1 washed your little white garment, which I wear with love and on which everyone congratulates me. I wear violet-red accessories with it — scarf and turban — and it’s very elegant. We washed, mended, did our nails, etc. and at 11.30 I went to bed — but some old hens in the next-door room talked for hours. I did sleep all the same, but badly.
At 8.30 I got up, went to pick my sister up from my grandmother’s and put her jubilantly on the train. Wanda had loaded her with chocolate and cigarettes and she was in seventh heaven. When I left her, it was as though nails were being plucked from my hands and feet. I went to the post office, but there wasn’t any letter from you — which was only to be expected, since Wednesday’s had already arrived yesterday. I had a note from Bost — a letter, even, and a very nice one. However, calling in after that on Kos., I was foolish enough to glance at a letter from Bost that was lying around: it gave me a jolt to see how tender it was. I accept the idea abstractly — indeed he told me expressly he was involved to the hilt — but when I really feel that he loves her, I can no longer believe he loves me too. Once again — albeit in a paler version, and against a strange background of unreality and absurdity — I had the same impression I told you about last year: something you have to swallow down quickly, without really identifying the taste on the way; something you’ll keep and brood over, but that you don’t have time to turn over right away to extract all the venom, so that you keep it as it is, with all its menace. For I had to go on talking to Kos., without being able to think. I left her pretty hastily and went off to the Coupole where, thanks also to the rain and a headache, I had a sticky moment — a moment of sheer absurdity, disgust and indifference. I ate, then updated my journal. I remembered the pine-wood at Juan-les-Pins, and how you’d reasoned with me so sensibly one day when I had the [same] blues, and then I felt a great, clear, violent pain — so passionate that it bordered on happiness. It’s still there, and since the hour’s so late it makes me weep. My sweet little one, I’ll never tell you enough what you are for me. You’re my strength, my ethics, and all I have that’s good. I see your face again so clearly at present, so affectionate and tender — my love — I see it.
[...]
This time I’m going to sleep. I think I’ll sleep well, because I’m fagged out. I worked for only one hour this morning, but that’s all right, it’s moving. And now it’ll proceed regula
rly. My beloved, I love you even more passionately than I thought. I didn’t think I’d find your absence so harrowing, but I do. Not because I need anyone — I don’t feel lonely or abandoned — but because I want you. O yourself, little being of flesh and blood with your little round-necked pullovers, your smiles, your two tender little arms — and your beautiful face, so rich, so pleasing, so loving, my love.
Your charming Beaver
* This time they really are little tears.
[Paris]
31 October 1939
SUCCESS EMMA HOPED FOR — DEFINITE ACCEPTANCE WEDNESDAY MORNING — BEAUVOIR
Telegram
Sartre Observation Post
Artillery Headquarters Zone 108
[A break in the correspondence occurs at this point, coinciding with the visit Simone de Beauvoir succeeded in making to Sartre, stationed at Brumath in Alsace. See the account of this visit in The Prime of Life, pp. 412-21.]
[Brumath, Alsace]
[1 November 1939]
Your pipe has been found safely at the Taverne du Cerf — it’s waiting for you there.182
Envelope
Private Sartre
[Paris]
Monday 6 November [1939]
My love
I’m happy, my love. I think I’m going to be happy for a long while now. I love you, my sweet little one, and am all enfolded in your affection. There were five letters from you at the post office this morning and I read them with a passion of tenderness and joy. Sweet little face, dear little being, never have I cared so strongly or so joyfully for you.
I’ll tell you everything. I left Emma183 at 8 yesterday, but I stupidly forgot to leave her any money. I ran after her almost immediately, but she’d already vanished into the darkness — so I’ll send it to her tomorrow morning. I entered a little station crowded with people — soldiers, and a few civilians laden with parcels. Like the village itself, it was a country station in wartime — but the war had utterly obliterated the countryside, in spite of the fine starry sky. There was an hour in a stopping train, then I got out at a big station to wait for the express. It was 9 o’clock and everything was dark. The train was leaving at midnight, so there were 3 hours to wait — and no refreshment bar, nothing but a gloomy waiting-room full of wooden tables and chairs hidden beneath packages and people: sad people, sad evacuees’ packages — mattresses, chicken-coops, etc. An airforce officer took charge of me and led me out of the station. Through a glazed door, he got round a hotel waitress: since the hotels are no longer open after 9, it was a miracle we were allowed in. I drank a lemonade and began to write up my journal, sitting thére opposite that ill-favoured, disagreeable fellow. But at 9.30 they threw us out. It was pitch dark outside, and we felt really hunted — nowhere to go except that horrible waiting-room. I read there, standing up, for almost an hour, after which I managed to get a chair. A noisome stove made the room dreadfully hot, while the stench of cheap cigars made it reek still more foully. But it made an intense impression on me, since all those people no longer seemed like some secondary aspect of war — a mere consequence of war — but were really war itself in person, presenting itself in a certain guise as true as any other. Precisely because it [is] imperceptible, I truly grasped how you can perceive it everywhere — like Gide’s God. From my conversations with Emma I still retained that intense intellectual exultation I’ve described to you — I was happy. I stepped onto the platform swarming with soldiers and stood there like a stylite, upright and unfeeling, unaware of the passage of time so full was my inner life. A train pulled in and all the soldiers made a rush for it, so that not a seat was left. But they were just announcing another one behind it, so I waited for that. This time, just as I was entering a very comfortable compartment containing only four people — three soldiers and a burly civilian — one of the soldiers asked me: ‘Are you on your own? You can come in here with us.’ And he vacated a corner seat for me, and urged one of his pals to lean against the door and keep it shut — which he did. One, a burly Alsatian [...] told me to lie down and wrapped me in his cape, while the civilian took a plump pillow from his luggage which I placed beneath my head — I felt like a queen. They began to chat and pass round Alsatian vieux marc, so I opened one eye and they offered me almost half a tumbler — it was delicious, and contributed to plunging me into a state of deep bliss. The Alsatian was kind enough to say: Tut your feet on my knees’, and politely to add: ‘May I take your shoes off?’ ‘Oh!’, I told him, ‘you can do what you like with my feet.’ But a little later, as I slept, I felt him take me at my word and start squeezing my ankles with considerable tenderness — so I pulled my feet away and he didn’t press the point. He’d told me with great gallantry at the outset, when I kept digging my heels into him: ‘Don’t worry, it’s the first contact I’ve had with a woman for 12 weeks.’ Through my sleep I heard their stories, always the same old thing: how Germans and Frenchmen go angling on opposite sides of the Rhine; how once, when a German machine-gun had fired a few shots, a sign had promptly been hoisted: Trench soldiers! That was just some clumsy fellow firing by mistake — we aren’t firing at you.’ They also spoke warmly about their officers — such as a certain captain who’d gone into a bar himself and bought a litre of wine for his men. And also of the terrible plight of those whose houses had been evacuated, in order to billet soldiers there. Even Alsatians don’t respect these houses. One soldier, wanting to skin a rabbit, had apparently nailed it to the doors of a mirror wardrobe. That made a real impression on those peasants - the idea that you could hack a mirror wardrobe to bits. They declared softly that they didn’t understand much about this war.
The train was late. I saw a fine, mild, golden day rise over the Marne - I think it must be an Indian summer. I dressed as best I could in the train lavatory, and as soon as we arrived jumped into a taxi which took me to C. See. The headmistress hadn’t received my apology note, but she didn’t reproach me. The other one got hers, so I can’t understand what mistake I can have made in the address. Two hours of teaching, then a meeting in the staff room to discuss with the headmistress how to distribute woollen garments to the evacuees — I was livid. I went by taxi to Montparnasse, where I called in at the poste restante: 5 letters from you, 6 from Bost — the clerk gave me an understanding smile. I bore my huge packet off to the Versailles, and for the first time read Bost’s letters first. They set my mind at rest — he’s truly charming, he loves me a great deal and tells me so very agreeably. My heart was filled with real affection for him, though no trace of passion remained, even regarding his leave. Anyway, I’ll be the first one to see him and I’ll go to pick him up at the station. I’ll have to reckon with him in my plans, just as you so wisely told me. After that I read your letters and, my love, they made a far more agreeable impression on me than I was expecting. I rediscovered in them an echo of all your words of yesterday — rediscovered the living yourself — and am going to reread them when I go to bed. My sweet little one, my dear love! Then I went to have my hair washed — in a quarter of an hour — which it really did need. Then I went to meet Kos. at the hotel.
My love, it’s 11 and I’m so tired — I want to sleep. I’ll go on with this account tomorrow morning. I saw your mother all right, and Wanda — I’ll tell you all about it. W. had her photo taken today, from which I deduce that she’s going to start making applications. It caused me a touch of foolish displeasure, but only the faintest and that’s over now. I love you, my sweet little one. I can see you again so clearly — I feel so close to you, so enfolded, so happy. You’re my joy, and my strength, and my life, and my sweet little beloved husband — and the dearest of little beings — my love.
Your charming Beaver
[Paris]
Tuesday 7 November [1939]
My dear love
I’m a bit disappointed because I was hoping to work this evening and wait till tonight to write to you. But all those hours of teaching tired me out, I’ve a headache and am already sleepy — I can’t work. I
hope that this will change in the days to come. At all events, tomorrow I’ve a full day’s work ahead of me, with a plan already drawn up — and I’m reckoning on it going well.
[...]
This morning I rose at 7 and went to the Mahieu. I wrote a little note to Bost before school, I hadn’t even replied yesterday to all his nice letters. Then 1½ hours of teaching. On the way out Sorokine was waiting for me. She was sitting on a kind of little stairway near the church, bare-legged, with heavy shoes on her feet, a red ribbon in her lovely blonde hair, and the look of a tiny little girl who’d grown too fast. She was touching and pleasing, but her eyes were full of tears and for quite a while I couldn’t get a word out of her. She’d had some dreadful scenes with her mother — who’d almost broken a brush over her head — and with her father, who’d terrorized her with his shouting. She didn’t want to stay with her family any longer, she was sick of being called a parasite. They’re really foul. She had just one measly 10 F. coin - earned from those lessons she gives — and her father appropriated it, calling her a frightful miser. Yet she does all her journeys in Paris on foot, so she can save up for her chemistry studies. I promised to pay for those studies next year — 200 F. a term — if she’s still penniless. We went to the Source, where we talked and ate pork chops. I bought some books for you: I’ll keep the Cassou184 and the Ellery Queen for two or three days to read. You should know that Garnets de Moleskine185 has been banned. The others haven’t yet been published, not one of them — not even the Troyat — so you’ll have to send me a new list. I sent off the Jules Romains volumes, and the money to my sister and to you. At the post office I met Jolibois,186 who’d just been to see M.P. exactly as I’d just been to see Emma — we might easily have met yesterday morning at the station. He’s bored, but well. I went to school: 3 hours of teaching. On my way out I met two pupils from last year: Goetschel — from whom you read a disagreeable letter — and one of her friends. That gave me a little jolt, because it brought last year so vividly to life. I really liked that class, and my work at that time. Now my classes are a dreadful burden to me. The girls were quite devoid of interest, actually, so I took them for a tea at Les Vikings then quickly got rid of them. I came up here and worked for 1½ hours, but then Jolibois showed up - on the pretext of asking for your address. I was so cold that she didn’t dare stay. Her relationship with M.P. seems to be becoming quite serious. I was upset, because you could hear desperate sobbing somewhere in the building and it seemed to come from Kos.’s room. A woman was crying out: ‘It’s not true! No, it’s not true!’ — and although I’d seen Kos.’s key downstairs, I imagined it was her and that she’d discovered all.187 Imagined it without really believing it. Actually, it came from down below and was the hysterical woman — but I still felt quite upset by it. Now I’m writing to you, and between now and 8 I’m going to write to my mother and the Boxer. Then I’ll go out for a while with Kos. and tomorrow I’m hoping for a long, studious day.