The Woman Destroyed by Simone De Beauvoir

Author:Simone De Beauvoir [Beauvoir, Simone de]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-83217-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-18T16:00:00+00:00

Sunday 26 September.

So it’s happened. It’s happened to me.

Monday 27 September.

Yes, here I am! It’s happened to me. It is perfectly usual. I must convince myself of that and strangle this fury that shattered me all yesterday. Maurice lied to me: yes, that too is perfectly usual. He might have gone on doing so instead of telling me. However late it is, I ought to feel grateful to him for his candor.

In the end I did go to sleep on Saturday. From time to time I stretched out to touch the other bed—its sheet was flat. (I like going to sleep before him when he is working in his consulting room. Through my dreams I hear water running, smell a faint whiff of eau de Cologne; I reach out, his body molds the sheet, and I sink deep down into happiness.) The front door slammed. I called, “Maurice!” It was three in the morning. They had not been working until three: they had been drinking and gossiping. I sat up in bed. “What kind of time is this to come home? Where have you been?”

He sat down in an armchair. He was holding a glass of whiskey in his hand.

“It’s three o’clock, I know.”

“Colette is ill, I’m racked with anxiety, and you come home at three. You haven’t all been working until three?”

“Is Colette worse?”

“She’s not better. You don’t care! Clearly, when you take the health of all mankind under your wing an ill daughter doesn’t amount to much.”

“Don’t be inimical.” He looked at me with a rather saddened gravity, and I melted as I always do melt when he envelops me in that dark, warm light. Gently I asked, “Tell me why you have come home so late.”

He made no reply.

“Were you drinking? Playing poker? Did you all go out? Did you forget the time?” He went on being silent, as it were emphatically silent, twirling his glass between his fingers. I flung out nonsensical words to make him lose his temper—to jerk an explanation out of him. “What’s the matter? Is there a woman in your life?”

Looking at me steadily he said, “Yes, Monique, there is a woman in my life.”

(Everything was blue above our heads and beneath our feet: on the other side of the strait loomed the coast of Africa. He squeezed me against him. “If you were to deceive me I should kill myself.” “If you were to deceive me I should have no need to kill myself. I should die of grief.” Fifteen years ago. Already? What do fifteen years count? Twice two is four. I love you, I love you alone. Truth cannot be destroyed: time has no effect upon it.)

“Who is it?”

“Noëllie Guérard.”

“Noëllie! Why?”

He shrugged. Of course. I knew the answer—pretty, dashing, bitchy, available. The sort of adventure that has no importance and that flatters a man. Did he need flattery?

He smiled at me. “I’m glad you questioned me. I hated lying to you.”

“Since when have you been lying to me?”

He scarcely hesitated at all.

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