The Woman Destroyed. Simone Beauvoir de

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      ‘No,’ said Irène, decisively. ‘Teaching and research—they really are too badly paid. I have a cousin who is a chemist. At the National Research Centre he was earning eight hundred francs a month. He has gone into a dye factory—he’s pulling down three thousand.’

      ‘It’s not only a question of money,’ said Philippe.

      ‘Of course not. Being in the swim counts too.’

      In little guarded, restrained phrases she let us see what she thought of us. Oh, she did it tactfully—with the tact you can hear rumbling half a mile away. ‘Above all I don’t want to hurt you—don’t hold it against me, for that would be unfair—but still there are some things I have to say to you and if I were not holding myself in I’d say a great deal more.’ Andrè is a great scientist of course and for a woman I haven’t done badly at all. But we live cut off from the world, in laboratories and libraries. The new generation of intellectuals wants to be in immediate contact with society. With his vitality and drive, Philippe is not made for our kind of life; there are other careers in which he would show his abilities far better. ‘And then of course a thesis is totally old hat,’ she ended.

      Why does she sometimes utter grotesque monstrosities? Irène is not really as stupid as all that. She does exist, she does amount to something: she has wiped out the victory I won with Philippe—a victory over him and for him. A long battle and sometimes so hard for me. ‘I can’t manage this essay; I have a head-ache. Give me a note saying I’m ill.’ ‘No.’ The soft adolescent face grows tense and old; the green eyes stab me. ‘How unkind you are.’ Andrè stepping in—‘Just this once…’ ‘No.’ My misery in Holland during those Easter holidays when we left Philippe in Paris. ‘I don’t want your degree to be botched.’ And with his voice full of hatred he shouted, ‘Don’t take me, then; I don’t care. And I shan’t write a single line.’ And then his successes and our understanding, our alliance. The understanding that Iréne is now destroying. I did not want to break out in front of her: I took hold of myself. ‘What do you mean to do, then?’

      Irène was about to answer. Philippe interrupted her. ‘Irène’s father has various things in mind.’

      ‘What kind of things? In business?’

      ‘It’s still uncertain.’

      ‘You talked it over with him before your journey. Why did you say nothing to us?’

      ‘I wanted to turn it over in my mind.’

      A sudden jet of anger filled me: it was unbelievable that he should not have spoken to me the moment the idea of leaving the university stirred in his mind.

      ‘Of course you two blame me,’ said Philippe angrily. The green of his eyes took on that stormy colour I knew so well.

      ‘No,’ said Andrè. ‘One must follow one’s own line.’

      ‘And you, do you blame me?’

      ‘Making money does not seem to me a very elevating ambition,’ I said. ‘I am surprised.’

      ‘I told you it is not a question of money.’

      ‘What is it a question of, then? Be specific.’

      ‘I can’t. I have to see my father-in-law again. But I shan’t accept his offer unless I think it worth while.’

      I argued a little longer, as mildly as possible, trying to persuade him of the value of his thesis and reminding him of earlier plans for papers and research. He answered politely, but my words had no hold on him. No, he did not belong to me any more; not any more at all. Even his physical appearance had changed: another kind of haircut; more up-to-date clothes—the clothes of the fashionable sixteenth arrondissement. It was I who moulded his life. Now I am watching it from outside, a remote spectator. It is the fate common to all mothers; but who has ever found comfort in saying that hers is the common fate?

      André saw them to the lift and I collapsed on to the divan. That void again … The happy day, the true presence underlying absence—it had merely been the certainty of having Philippe here, for a few hours. I had waited for him as though he were coming back never to go away again: he will always go away again. And the break between us is far more final than I had imagined. I shall no longer share in his work; we shall no longer have the same interests. Does money really mean all that to him? Or is he only giving way to Irène? Does he love her as much as that? One would have to know about their nights together. No doubt she can satisfy his body to the full, as well as his pride: beneath her fashionable exterior I can see that she might be capable of remarkable outbursts. The: bond that physical happiness brings into being between a man and woman is something whose importance I tend to underestimate. As far as I am concerned sexuality no longer exists. I used to call this indifference serenity: all at once I have come to see it in another light—it is a mutilation; it is the loss of the sense. The lack of it makes me blind to the needs, the pains and the joys of those who do possess it. It seems to me that I no longer know anything at all about Philippe. Only one thing is certain—the degree to which I am going to miss him. It was perhaps thanks to him that I adapted myself to my age, more or less. He carried me along with his youth. He used to take me to the twenty-four hour race at Le Mans, to op-art shows and even, once, to a happening. His mercurial, inventive presence filled the house. Shall I grow used to this silence, this prudent, well-behaved flow of days that is never again to be broken by anything unforeseen?

      I said to André, ‘Why didn’t you help me try to bring Philippe to his senses? You gave way at once. Between us we might perhaps have persuaded him.’

      ‘People have to be left free. He never terribly wanted to teach.’

      ‘But he was interested in his thesis.’

      ‘Up to a point, a very vaguely defined point. I understand him.’

      ‘You understand everybody.’

      Once André was as uncompromising for others as he was for himself. Nowadays his political attitudes have not weakened but in private life he keeps his rigour for himself alone: he excuses people, he explains them, he accepts them. To such a pitch that sometimes it maddens me. I went on, ‘Do you think that making money is an adequate goal in life?’

      ‘I really scarcely know what our goals were, nor whether they were adequate.’

      Did he really believe what he was saying, or was he amusing himself by teasing me? He does that sometimes, when he thinks me too set in my convictions and my principles. Usually I put up with it very well—I join in the game. But this time I was in no mood for trifling. My voice rose. ‘Why have we led the kind of life we have led if you think other ways of life just as good?’

      ‘Because we could not have done otherwise.’

      ‘We could not have done otherwise because it was our way of life that seemed to us valid.’

      ‘No. As far as I was concerned knowing, discovering, was a mania, a passion, even a kind of neurosis, without the slightest moral justification. I never thought everybody else should do the same.’

      Deep down I do think that everybody else should do the same, but I did not choose to argue the point. I said, ‘It is not a question of everybody, but of Philippe. He is going to turn into a fellow concerned with dubious money-making deals. That was not what I brought him up for.’

      André reflected. СКАЧАТЬ