Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone De Beauvoir

Author:Simone De Beauvoir
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

‘O, well-belovèd, it’s too late now, my heart is breaking,

A break too deep for bitterness, and I have wept so long . . .’

I liked to feel the tears singeing my eyes. But at certain moments, with all my defences down, I would seek refuge in the side-aisles of a church in order to be able to weep in peace; there I would prostrate myself with my head in my hands, suffocated by the bitter-smelling dark.

*

Jacques returned to Paris at the end of January. The day after his return he came to see us. My parents had had photographs taken of me for my nineteenth birthday, and he asked me for one; never had I heard such tender inflexions in his voice. I was trembling when, a week later, I rang at his door, for I was dreading some brutal relapse into indifference. I was enchanted by our meeting. He had started a novel, which he was calling Les Jeunes Bourgeois, and he told me: ‘It’s because of you I’m writing it.’ He also told me that he would dedicate it to me: ‘I feel I owe it to you.’ For the next few days, I was walking on air. The week after, I talked to him about myself; I described my boredom, and told him how I could no longer see any meaning in life. ‘There’s no need to look so hard,’ he told me gravely. ‘One must simply live from day to day.’ A little later, he added: ‘One must have the humility to recognize that one can’t face life alone; it’s easier to have someone else to live for.’ He smiled at me: ‘The solution would be to cultivate our egos together.’

I kept dwelling on that phrase, that smile; I was no longer in any doubt: Jacques loved me; we would be married. But there was something very wrong: my happiness didn’t last any longer than three days. Jacques came back to see us; I spent a very happy evening with him, and after he had left I broke down: ‘I’ve got everything a girl could want to make her happy, yet I feel I want to die! Life is here, waiting for me, waiting for us to seize it with both hands. I’m frightened: I am alone, I shall always be alone. . . . If only I could run away – where to? Anywhere. It would be like a terrible cataclysm, sweeping us away.’ For Jacques, marriage was obviously an end in itself, and I didn’t want to put an end to anything, at least not so soon. For another month I tussled with my feelings. At moments I was able to persuade myself that I could live alongside Jacques without mutilating myself; and then terror would seize me again: ‘What? Imprison myself in the limitations of another human being? I would feel only horror for a love that held me prisoner, and would not let me go. I have a longing to snap this link between us, to forget it all, to start a fresh life all over again.

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