A Memory
How many memories of my youth came to me under the gentle caress of the earliest summer sun! It is an age wherein all is good, glad, charming, and intoxicating. How exquisite are the memories of lost springs!
Do you recall, my old friends, my brothers, those years of gladness in which life was but triumph and laughter? Do you recall the days when we roamed disreputably about Paris, our radiant poverty, our walks in the woods newly clad in green, our revels under the open sky outside the taverns on the banks of the Seine, and our love-adventures, so commonplace and so delicious?
I should like to relate one of those adventures. It dates from twelve years ago, and already feels so old, so old, that it seems now at the other end of my life, before the turning, the ugly turning whence suddenly I saw the end of the journey.
I was twenty-five in those days. I had just come to Paris; I worked in a government office, and Sundays seemed to me extraordinary festivals, full of exuberant happiness, although nothing remarkable ever happened on them.
Every day is Sunday now. But I regret the times when I had only one a week. How good it was! I had six francs to spend!
I awoke early, that particular morning, with that feeling of freedom well known to clerks, the feeling of deliverance, rest, tranquillity, and independence.
I opened my window. The weather was glorious. The clear blue sky was spread above the city, full of sunshine and swallows.
I dressed very quickly and went out, eager to spend the day in the woods, to breathe the odour of the leaves; for I came of country stock, and spent my childhood on the grass and under the trees.
Paris was waking joyfully, in the warmth and the light. The fronts of the houses shone, the concierges’ canaries sang furiously in their cages, and gaiety ran down the street, lighting up faces and stirring laughter everywhere, as though a mysterious happiness filled all animate and inanimate life in that radiant dawn.
I reached the Seine, to catch the Swallow, which was to take me to Saint-Cloud.
How I loved waiting for the boat upon the landing-stage! I felt as though I were off to the end of the world, to new and wonderful countries. I watched the boat come into sight, away in the distance under the arch of the second bridge, very small, with its plume of smoke, then larger, larger, always growing; and to my mind it took on the airs and graces of a liner.
It came alongside the stage, and I embarked.
A crowd of people in their Sunday clothes were already on board, with gay dresses, brilliantly coloured ribbons, and fat scarlet faces. I placed myself right in the bows, and stood there watching quays, trees, houses, and bridges go by. And suddenly I saw the great viaduct of Point-du-Jour barring the stream. It was the end of Paris, the beginning of the country, and at once beyond the double line of arches the Seine widened out, as though space and liberty had been granted to it, becoming suddenly the lovely peaceful river that flows on across the plains, at the foot of the wooded hills, through the meadows, and along the edge of the forest.
After passing between two islands, the Swallow followed the curve of a slope whose green expanse was covered with white houses. A voice announced: “Bas-Meudon”; then, farther on: “Sèvres,” and, still farther on: “Saint-Cloud.”
I disembarked. And I hurried through the little town along the road to the woods. I had brought a map of the suburbs of Paris, lest I lost myself on the paths which run in every direction across the woods where the people of Paris go for their expeditions.
As soon as I was in the shade, I studied my route, which seemed perfectly simple. I was to turn to the right, then to the left, then to the left again, and I should arrive at Versailles by nightfall, for dinner.
And I began to walk slowly, beneath the fresh leaves, drinking in the fragrant air, perfumed with the odour of buds and sap. I walked with short steps, unmindful of the stacks of old paper, of the office, of my chief and my colleagues, and of files, and dreaming of the happy adventures that must assuredly be waiting for me in the stretches of that veiled, unknown future. I was filled with a thousand memories of childhood awakened in me by the scents of the country, and I went on, sunk in the fragrant, living, throbbing loveliness of the woods, warmed by the powerful June sun.
Sometimes I sat down by a bank and looked at the little flowers of every kind, whose names I had long known. I knew them all again, just as though they were the very ones I had once seen in my own country. They were yellow, red, and violet, delicate and dainty, lifted on high stalks or huddled close to the earth. Insects of every colour and shape, short and squat or long and thin, extraordinary in their construction, frightful microscopic monsters, peacefully mounted the blades of grass, which bent under their weight.
Then I slept for some hours in a ditch, and went on again, rested and strengthened by my sleep.
In front of me opened a delightful alley, whose rather sparse leafage allowed drops of sunlight to shower everywhere upon the soil, and gleamed on the white daisies. It ran on endlessly, calm and empty. A solitary great hornet buzzed down it, pausing at times to sip a flower that stooped beneath it, and flying off again almost at once to come to rest again a little farther on. Its fat body looked like brown velvet striped with yellow, borne on wings that were transparent and inordinately small.
Suddenly I saw at the end of the path two people, a man and a woman, coming towards me. Annoyed at being disturbed in my quiet walk, I was on the point of plunging into the undergrowth when I fancied I heard them calling to me. The woman was actually waving her sunshade, and the man, in his shirtsleeves, his frock-coat over one arm, was raising the other as a signal of distress.
I went towards them. They were walking hurriedly, both very red, she with little rapid steps, he with long strides. Ill humour and weariness was visible on their faces. The woman asked me at once:
“Monsieur, can you tell me where we are? My idiotic husband has lost us, after saying that he knew this district perfectly.”
“Madame,” I replied confidently, “you are going towards Saint-Cloud, and Versailles is behind you.”
“What!” she continued, glancing with angry pity towards her husband. “Versailles is behind us? But that is precisely where we mean to have dinner!”
“So do I, madame; I am going there.”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!” she repeated, in the tone of overwhelming contempt with which women express their exasperation.
She was quite young, pretty, and dark, with a shadow of a moustache on her lip.
As for the man, he was perspiring and mopping his brow. Without doubt they were Parisian shopkeepers. The man looked overcome, tired out and miserable.
“But, my dear girl,” he murmured, “it was you …”
She did not permit him to finish the sentence.
“It was I! … Ah! it is I now. Was it I who wanted to go off without inquiries, declaring that I could always find my way? Was it I who wanted to turn to the right at the top of the hill, declaring that I remembered the way? Was it I who undertook to look after Cachou …”
She had not finished speaking when her husband, as though he had suddenly gone out of his mind, uttered a piercing cry, a long, wild cry, which cannot be written in any language, but which was something like teeeteeet.
The young woman seemed neither surprised nor excited, and continued:
“No, upon my word, some people are too silly, always pretending to know everything. Was it I who took the Dieppe train last year instead of the Havre train? Tell me, was it I? Was it I who betted that Monsieur Letournier lived in the Rue des Martyrs? … Was it I who wouldn’t believe that Céleste was a thief? …”
And she continued furiously, with amazing rapidity of speech, piling up the most heterogeneous, unexpected, and grievous charges, furnished by all the intimate situations in their existence together, blaming her husband for all his actions, ideas, manners, experiments, and efforts, his whole life, in fact, from their wedding day up to the present moment.
He tried to stop her, to calm her, and faltered:
“But, my dear girl … it’s no use … in front of the gentleman … we’re making an exhibition of ourselves. It is of no interest to the gentleman.”
And he turned his melancholy eyes upon the thickets, as though eager to explore their peaceful and mysterious depths, to rush into them, escape and hide from every eye. From time to time he again uttered his cry, a prolonged, very shrill teeeteeet. I imagined this habit was a nervous disorder.
The young woman abruptly turned to me and, changing her tone with remarkable rapidity, remarked:
“If monsieur will be good enough to permit us, we will go with him, in order not to lose ourselves again and risk having to sleep in the wood.”
I bowed; she took my arm and began to talk of a thousand things, of herself, her life, her family, and her business. They kept a glove-shop in the Rue Saint-Lazare.
Her husband walked beside her, continually throwing wild glances into the thick of the trees, and every now and then shouting teeeteeet.
At last I asked him:
“Why do you shout like that?”
“It’s my poor dog that I’ve lost,” he replied with an air of consternation and despair.
“What? You have lost your dog?”
“Yes. He was barely a year old. He had never gone out of the shop. I wanted to take him for a walk in the woods. He had never seen grass or leaves before, and it pretty well sent him off his head. He began to run about, barking, and has disappeared in the forest. I should also tell you that he was very frightened of the railway; it may have made him lose his senses. I have called and called in vain; he has not come back. He will die of hunger in there.”
Without turning towards her husband, the woman remarked:
“If you had kept him on the lead, it wouldn’t have happened. People as silly as you have no business to have dogs.”
“But, my dear girl, it was you …”
She stopped short; and looking into his eyes as though she were going to tear them out, she began once more her innumerable reproaches.
Night was falling. The veil of mist which covers the countryside at twilight was slowly unfolding; romance hovered around, born of the strange, delightful coolness that fills the woods at the approach of night.
Suddenly the young man stopped, and, feeling about himself frantically, exclaimed:
“Oh! I believe I have …”
“Well, what?” she asked, looking at him.
“I did not realise that I was carrying my frock-coat on my arm.”
“Well?”
“I have lost my letter-case … my money is in it.”
She quivered with rage and choked with indignation.
“That is the last straw. How idiotic you are, how perfectly idiotic! How can I have married such a fool? Well, go and look for it, and take care that you find it. I will go on to Versailles with this gentleman. I don’t want to spend the night in the woods.”
“Yes, dear,” he replied meekly; “where shall I find you?”
A restaurant had been recommended to me. I told him of it.
The husband turned back and, bending down towards the ground, scanning it with anxious eyes, he walked away, continually shouting teeeteeet.
It was a long time before he disappeared; the shades of evening, thicker now, obscured him at the far end of the path. Soon the outline of his body was seen no more, but for a long time we heard his melancholy teeeteeet, teeeteeet, becoming shriller as the night grew darker.
As for me, I walked on with lively, happy steps through the sweetness of the twilight, with the unknown woman leaning on my arm.
I racked my brain in vain for compliments. I remained silent, excited and enraptured.
But suddenly a high road cut across our path. I saw that on the right, in a valley, there was quite a town.
What was this place?
A man was passing; I questioned him.
“Bougival,” he replied.
I was thunderstruck.
“Bougival! Are you sure?”
“Damn it all, I live there!”
The little woman laughed uproariously.
I suggested taking a cab to Versailles.
“Certainly not!” she replied. “This is too funny, and I’m so hungry. I’m not a bit anxious; my husband will always find his way all right. It’s a pleasure for me to be relieved of him for a few hours.”
We accordingly entered a restaurant by the waterside, and I was bold enough to engage a private room.
She got thoroughly tipsy, I can assure you; sang, drank champagne, and did all sorts of crazy things … even the craziest of all.
That was my first adultery!