The Confidant. Helene Gremillon

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СКАЧАТЬ two years went by and nature still had not taken its course. Those couples who had got married when they did already had a child, some were even expecting their second. Madame M. was desperate. She had followed excruciating diets. She had taken medication she made up on her own, but nothing worked. Completely at a loss, she ended up inflicting torture on herself. But no matter what she tried, she did not get pregnant. Her story was horrifying. That is why she had come to settle at L’Escalier. To get away from those terrible memories.

      By the time she stopped talking the water was cold, her lips were blue. Sophie was knocking on the door. Madame M. stood up, and I could not help but look at her body. Her skin was marked from her buttocks to her knees. The lesions were healing but I could still see the scars from the blows she had inflicted on herself. ‘To awaken the sleeping organs’, books advised ‘whipping the lower back and the inner thighs until they bleed.’ I could not understand how she could have subjected herself to such a thing. Her answer was chilling. ‘Because that is the only advice there is for infertile women.’ She had never looked at me like that. In that moment I remember thinking she no longer found me such an ‘easy person to like’, as she put it.

      We sat down at the dinner table. Neither one of us was hungry, but we forced ourselves, so we wouldn’t have to speak. It seemed to me that I understood her. In a way I missed the brother or sister I had never had as much as she missed the child she could not have. I just wanted to reassure her when I told her that some day it would work, that my parents had also waited a very long time before they had me. She didn’t answer. She went on eating in silence.

      After my parents, and then Madame M., I thought it was something of a coincidence, all these people around me yearning for children. And as I had never known what purpose I served in life, that day as I sat there staring at my piece of lamb I believed that my role in life would be to fight infertility. Suddenly it became absolutely clear to me. ‘The room without walls’, the paintings, Alberto – at last I had a way to thank her for everything she had done for me. I did not know how to tell her. The agony aunt column was there before me. I took a sheet of paper and a pencil and I wrote, reading it out loud.

      ‘Dear Mary Pigpen, a woman I love with all my heart cannot have a child. I don’t want children. The only thing that matters to me in life is painting. So I would like to bear her child for her. That way I could, in turn, give her what she needs in life.’

      Madame M. did not look up. I saw her tears flowing into her plate, she went on eating without looking at me, shaken by terrible sobs. She eventually managed to say that the young girl who was writing this letter was extremely kind, but she didn’t know what she was saying, and Mary Pigpen was bound to bring her back to her senses. And then she stood up and left the dining room. We did not speak of it any more.

      When, two months later, she told me she would do it, at first I did not understand. And then she murmured that we would have to be very careful so that no one would know. At the time I did not know what to say. I had made the suggestion in the heat of our conversation because everything had got muddled in my head. The idea of my recently discovered fertility. Her infertility. Her sorrow. My gratitude. Now the idea seemed a bit foolish. But I quickly reassured myself: her husband would never agree to it.

      ‘I have managed to convince my husband: you will try just once, and if it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. God will decide.’

      She did not ask me my opinion again. She explained in minute detail how it would all come about. I would not have to do a thing, it would not take long, she promised. She had arranged everything. Her husband would be coming back within the hour and she thought it would be a good idea if we made the most of this time.

      I could not believe he had agreed.

      ‘Let’s wait until tomorrow.’

      That was all I managed to say. I could tell I was headed for disaster but all the courage I could muster was that of avoidance. ‘Let’s wait until tomorrow.’ I didn’t want it to happen under these conditions. Not with a man I did not know. Not for the first time.

      Madame M. must have thought I was trying to wriggle out of it, but that wasn’t it. I just needed some time. I would keep my promise. I couldn’t go back on my word now, I had never seen her so happy. Besides, I wasn’t afraid. With all her explanations it felt like I had an appointment at the doctor’s. No more, no less. And that was something I was used to.

      Just to be alone now. And stare at a canvas. Not to think, just not to have to think. Madame M. seemed embarrassed. When I went into the room without walls, I understood why. A bed had grown there overnight. And the mirror had vanished behind a drape that was even redder and newer than all the others. I could not stay in that room. As I walked down the driveway I passed her husband. I did not dare look at him.

      But the next morning I kept our appointment. And everything went just as she had hoped. I became pregnant ‘with the efficiency of a virgin’.

      We left three months later. Before my clothed body could betray us. She had planned everything. We would leave the village for the duration of my pregnancy and come back after the birth. And life would go on as before. As if nothing had happened, except that at last in her arms she would be holding the infant she had so desired. How could I have believed things could be that simple?

      Throughout her entire story Annie had been pacing the room, her cup of chicory between her palms. As if suddenly reminded of its existence, she put the cup down on the table and came to sit next to me again.

      ‘You are the first person I have ever told this story to, Louis. I wrote it in a letter to my parents. But they never received it. Even though Sophie swore to me that she would post it. I shall never forgive her.’

      Annie was probably expecting me to ask her questions. ‘What happened?’ ‘Where is your child?’ But as a poor jealous man I could find nothing better than to insult her.

      ‘That kind Monsieur M. was no luckier than I was. Well, it looks like one time only is all any of us can expect from you!’

      Annie’s expression grew tense, she had tears in her eyes. But for once I didn’t care – about her, about what had happened, about her unhappiness; all I could think of was myself and I wanted to make her pay for what I felt she still owed me, despite the years: my unrequited love.

      Her wedding band was an offence to my eyes. She must not have known how to tell me she was married.

      The church bell struck seven. Annie suddenly felt for the pocket of her cardigan. She said she had forgotten to leave the keys for her colleague who was supposed to close up the shop where they worked, she was sorry, she had to go back there, she couldn’t afford to get herself sacked. She asked me to wait for her; she had so many things to tell me. She begged me to forgive her if she had hurt me; she hadn’t meant to. She was distraught. She hurriedly put on her shoes and went out, shoelaces trailing. I listened to her footsteps as they faded away on the stairs; I had not lost my schoolboy habits.

      I had been deeply troubled upon seeing her again; for almost three years I had believed that she was married or lost or even dead, and now she had reappeared in my life without warning. And she was telling me everything. I certainly had not reacted in the way she expected. But I already knew her story.

      What Annie didn’t know was that Sophie had indeed kept her word, and Annie’s mother had indeed received her letter.

      I can still see the anxious old woman dripping with rain under the awning outside my house, holding a huge umbrella. It was pouring that day. She handed me the letter. I immediately recognised Annie’s handwriting. The envelope contained several pages of closely СКАЧАТЬ