The Confidant. Helene Gremillon
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up my trousers. Once we were dressed, we both felt better. Above all to be together. I was afraid that Annie might leave right away, but she didn’t, we went on lying there facing the stars that had still not come out. Again I had the impression that Annie had something to tell me, but she said nothing.
To this day, I am still angry with myself for not having found the necessary courage. I had found the courage to make love to her, badly, but not to get her to speak. I could have stopped her from going to her appointment with Monsieur M. and then none of this would ever have happened.
I was overwhelmed with emotion. I had indeed always been the first. Annie had not lied. Or at least, not about that.
Because if she had fallen pregnant from Monsieur M. ‘with the efficiency of a virgin’, as she liked to say, she should have left three months later: April…May…June. So, in July.
But she had left the day after Christmas, and that was something I remembered clearly. I had gone to her house to give her a little present, which in rage I threw against a tree on my way back home. She had just left with Madame M.
July…August…September…October…November…December…
So there were five months missing from Annie’s story; that was a lot.
If the door to her bedroom had not suddenly banged against my back, I might have guessed what had happened during that lapse of time she had conjured away.
I quickly got to my feet, tossing the underwear beneath the dresser to get rid of it. If this was her husband coming home, I would have to restrain myself from smashing him in the face. Annie fell into my arms so eagerly that I got a lump in my throat: she had honestly been afraid I would no longer be there when she got back. She had been quick. She took a strange statue out of her bag, a long-legged woman seated on a sort of chair, her hands open wide around the empty space as if she were holding an invisible object in front of her belly, and that was the name of the statue, ‘the Invisible Object’. It was a gift from Alberto that she had brought back from the shop to show me. She put it on the table but, rather than sitting down, she suggested that we go out.
This was the day that she normally went to the municipal baths; did I mind going there with her?
I found it somewhat strange, how eager she was suddenly to have a wash, but I did not dwell upon it. I supposed she was in a hurry because of the curfew. I hoped the fresh air would help me recover my wits, but Annie did not give me any respite. No sooner were we in the street than she continued her story where she had left off in order to go and drop off the keys. Without making any mention, naturally, of the mysterious months that had vanished. It would be years before I learned anything more about them.
Madame M. had planned everything. For the duration of my pregnancy we would move to their home in Paris, where they used to live before they came to L’Escalier. Above all we must say nothing to my parents; they would not understand why I didn’t go to see them from time to time. As far as anyone knew we had gone a long way away, in the south. To Collioure, where the climate was gentler. We had to find a pretext for our departure. And if war did break out, even though it did not seem to be heading that way, at least we would be in a safe place. Madame M. had an explanation for everything.
I felt uncomfortable lying to my parents. She offered to tell them for me. It wouldn’t cost her anything and she had planned to come to the house in any case, to meet them and reassure them. My father didn’t say a word. He sat there ramrod straight in his armchair. Maman didn’t even try to ease the tension. She was too sad to pretend otherwise. But Madame M. was not one to get flustered. She was a very good liar. That should have alerted me. My father asked me if I really wanted to go there with that woman for the duration of her pregnancy. I said I did. So, without even getting to his feet he ordered Madame M. to leave his house immediately.
After that things became unbearable. My father accused me of abandoning them for a bourgeoise who was pregnant from a capitalist. Filthy rich parasites. That was his new refrain. Whenever I made the mistake of looking at him he would order me to stop judging him. The moment I didn’t help myself to seconds it was ‘mademoiselle has become a picky eater ever since she started sharing her lunches with the duchess’. One evening he went too far and I lost my temper. It was time he stopped exaggerating, I was not ‘abandoning’ them, they had managed to live forty years without me, they would survive five short months, and besides, we would write to each other, it wasn’t the end of the world…
I am sorry that I spoke to them like that. I should never have left them, but how was I to know? I thought about everything I was about to discover in Paris. If it had been up to me alone, we would have left even earlier. But I felt so sorry for Maman. I didn’t manage to reassure her. Her maternal intuition, I suppose. The final weeks were tricky. I fled from her measuring tape like the plague. She kept telling me what it was like when her breasts had started to grow; she’d got it into her head that this was why I wouldn’t let her take my measurements. ‘I’m the one who made you, after all!’ she said, again and again. She was so kind, Maman. Yet I had to keep pushing her away. In fact, I couldn’t stop thinking of a story that you had told me, about Rodin. Do you remember? About a sitting where he discovered that one of his models was pregnant before the girl herself even knew. Well, I was sure the same thing would happen with Maman. Even with her eyes closed she could tell. She knew my body too well: as she said, she was the one who had made me. Nor could I buy new clothes to camouflage my belly – she would have really taken it as an insult.
Luckily my seams held up until Christmas. My last Christmas with my parents. I was three months pregnant. Papa gave me an easel he had made himself, bigger than the other one because I had grown. Well, no, he didn’t exactly give it to me. He was too proud for that. I found it under the Christmas tree. Covered in a lovely sea-green woollen cape. ‘I knitted it myself, thinking of what it feels like to hold you in my arms.’ I let Maman hold me tight, even though I usually wouldn’t let her near me any more. Papa didn’t even want a thank-you kiss for the easel. I cried. But not in his presence, anything but that.
The next day was the big departure. I left with Madame M. at night. No one must see me arrive at their house. She had prepared everything. I would take Sophie’s room under the eaves. That way I could open the window without any risk, as there were no facing windows. On the way she explained that no one must know I was there. When she had visitors I would stay in my room. When she went out as well. Because, in spite of the curtains, passers-by or neighbours would be able to see whether someone was in a room. And if they had just run into her in the street or elsewhere, they would wonder who was in the house. I complied with these arrangements without protesting. I divided my time between Sophie’s room and the bathroom next door, where there was no window either. When Madame M. was there and I wanted to stretch my legs, she would come up to my room. The rest of the time we spent there together. In that respect it was not that different from L’Escalier. I painted. She read. Except that it was a bit cramped.
And to think I had believed I’d be discovering Paris!
In those days the news from the front was still good. The war no longer took up the headlines. Maybe just one or two columns. Just enough to show all the soldiers languishing on the Maginot line that they had not been forgotten. Ever since we read that they were planting roses there to boost the troops’ morale we lost any fear of a full-scale war. Mobilisation wasn’t war, that’s what you read everywhere. It was nothing but a ‘Phoney War’. We amused ourselves trying to guess the words that had been blacked out in the papers. We spent some time on it. There were so many blanks that certain articles were illegible.
‘Twelve people had to be hospitalised in Paris after they slipped on a patch of […] covering the pavement.’
‘Ice!’
‘Well done!’
Even weather forecasts were forbidden: they might be useful to the enemy.
Madame M.’s unbridled cheerfulness was completely new to me. She went out a great deal, but did not neglect me for all that. She told me how she spent her time – the races at Longchamp, the charity sales for the soldiers…She told me about people. She gave me fashionable