Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roché

Author:Henri-Pierre Roché
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241215425
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHLOE

Is there then no more to know,

Daphnis,

Than lying in each other’s arms

And sleeping so?

DAPHNIS

Yes, Chloe, there is more to know

And more to do:

There’s taking you –

Which, till now, I never knew.

CHLOE

Is there then no more to do,

Daphnis, than what you never knew –

This taking me?

DAPHNIS

Yes, Chloe, there is more to do:

There’s lying in each other’s arms

And sleeping so.

Kate said, ‘I like the way it goes round in a circle.’

Jules said, ‘It’s like a literal translation from several languages simultaneously.’

Jim said the frontiers between languages ought to be abolished. They made up some short poems in a mixture of three languages, just as things came into their heads, as in dreams. Jules and Jim invented a new continent of their own, Austrasia; but Kate’s poems declared there must be more ruins and more wars.

‘You’re good Europeans,’ Jules said to them. ‘It’s only right inside your love that you’re nationalists.’

This nerve-racking period of waiting went on for a long time.

Life was no longer at ‘set fair’ for Kate and Jim, it was un dependable and insecure. The calmest sky would suddenly reverberate with thunder, and Kate would be overwhelmed by destructive rage. She needed battles and bloodshed.

Her face would be ravaged instantaneously by doubt, and her expression became terrifying; the archaic smile turned into a knife-gash.

At such times Jules took care of her like an invalid. He regarded these crises as a sacred malady which was dangerous for her and for them all, an ‘earthquake of the soul’. In Kate’s family there had been both highly gifted people and apparently unmotivated suicides.

And whenever Jim was too happy she was under a compulsion to strike him down.

One day when she was feeling beatific, they went to town together. In order to get their tiresome errands done quicker and have time for fun afterwards, Jim suggested that he should go on his own to get a document which was needed in connection with the marriage, while she went shopping.

After all, she liked being left alone in town, with the reins loose on her neck; she enjoyed being treated as something that can’t be stolen. She got into a taxi; as it was moving off she said to Jim, who was running along by the window – said it right into his face as he was coming close for a kiss:

‘And now I’m going to do something really irreparable.’

They had arranged to meet for tea, but she didn’t appear; he didn’t see her till the evening, at the chalet.

She won them back to her by the joy she showed at being with Jim again. She said she hadn’t done anything. Jim believed her. Jules didn’t, precisely because she had completely got over her crisis and was fond and warm with Jim. ‘What of it?’ thought Jules, ‘it’s her way of loving.’

At the end of a meal Jules did something which was unusual for him; he made a mildly bawdy joke about a nightdress of Kate’s. Jim disliked this; and Kate took it as a heinous insult, both to himself and to love.

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