The Woman Destroyed Read Online Free

can’t manage this essay; I have a headache. 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.” André stepping in—“Just this once.…” “No.” My misery in Holland during these 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.” Andthen his successes and our understanding, our alliance. The understanding that Irène 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 color I knew so well.
    “No,” said André. “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 just 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 worthwhile.”
    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 anymore; not anymore at all. Even his physical appearance had changed: another kind of haircut; more up-to-date clothes—the clothes of the fashionablesixteenth
arrondissement
. It was I who molded 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 elevator, and I collapsed onto 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 that 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 a 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, inventivepresence filled the house. Shall I grow used to this silence, this