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Authors: Raymond Radiguet
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opportunity to tell her husband and son-in-law that they hadn’t the first idea about feminine sensitivities. She was gratified that Jacqueshad so little hold over her daughter’s heart. Because everything that Marthe withdrew from her husband, Madame Grangier attributed to herself, thinking her scruples sublime. Sublime they were, but for me.
On days when Marthe claimed to be feeling even more unwell, she would insist on going out. Jacques was well aware that it wasn’t for the pleasure of taking him with her. Unable to entrust anyone else with letters addressed to me, she posted them herself.
I congratulated myself even more for my own silence, because had I been able to write to her, my response to her accounts of the pain she was inflicting would have been to side with the victim. At times I was horrified by the harm I was causing; at others I told myself that Marthe could never punish Jacques enough for the crime of depriving me of her virginity. But since nothing makes us less ‘romantic’ than passion, ultimately I was delighted that I wasn’t able to write, and that as a result Marthe continued driving Jacques to despair.
He left again, disheartened.
Everyone attributed these problems to the irksome solitude in which Marthe was living. Her parents and her husband were the only ones who didn’t know about our relationship, while the owners didn’t dare tell Jacques out of respect for the uniform. In fact Madame Grangier was very pleased to have her daughter back, and that she was living as she had done before she got married. So the Grangiers couldn’t believe it when the day after Jacques left, Marthe told them she was going back to J.…
I saw her that same day. At first I reproached her halfheartedly for being so unkind. But when I read Jacques’s first letter, I was panic-stricken. He told her how easy itwould be to get himself killed if Marthe didn’t love him any more.
I didn’t detect the ‘blackmail’ here. I believed I was responsible for a death, forgetting that that was what I had wanted. I became even more unfathomable, more unfair. Whatever we said or did opened another wound. However much Marthe told me that it was kinder not to build Jacques’s hopes up, it was me who forced her to go gently in her replies to him. It was me who dictated the only affectionate letters that he ever received from his wife. She wrote them under protest, in tears, but I threatened never to see her again if she didn’t do as I said. That Jacques should owe his only moments of joy to me helped ease my remorse.
I could tell how hollow his wish to kill himself was from the hope that overflowed from the letters in which he replied to
ours
.
I was proud of my behaviour towards poor Jacques, even though I did it for my own benefit, out of the fear of having a crime on my conscience.
XV
AFTER THESE DRAMAS CAME A TIME OF HAPPINESS. But sadly it still had a temporary feeling to it. It stemmed from my age, my lack of backbone. I didn’t have the willpower to do anything, whether to abandon Marthe, who might forget me and go back to her responsibilities, or to drive Jacques to his death. So our relationship was at the mercy of the permanent return of peace and the troops. If he threw his wife out, she would still be mine. If he kept her, I was incapable of taking her back by force. Our happiness was built on sand. But since we had no idea when the tide would come in, I just hoped that it would be as late as possible.
It was now a delighted Jacques who stood up for Marthe against her mother, who was annoyed at her going back to J.… Incited by her acrimony, the move had also roused Madame Grangier’s suspicions. And there was something else she found dubious: Marthe refused to have servants, to the horror of her family and, even more so, that of her husband’s. Yet what could parents or parents-in-law do, faced with a Jacques who was now our ally, thanks to the excuses I had provided for him through
On days when Marthe claimed to be feeling even more unwell, she would insist on going out. Jacques was well aware that it wasn’t for the pleasure of taking him with her. Unable to entrust anyone else with letters addressed to me, she posted them herself.
I congratulated myself even more for my own silence, because had I been able to write to her, my response to her accounts of the pain she was inflicting would have been to side with the victim. At times I was horrified by the harm I was causing; at others I told myself that Marthe could never punish Jacques enough for the crime of depriving me of her virginity. But since nothing makes us less ‘romantic’ than passion, ultimately I was delighted that I wasn’t able to write, and that as a result Marthe continued driving Jacques to despair.
He left again, disheartened.
Everyone attributed these problems to the irksome solitude in which Marthe was living. Her parents and her husband were the only ones who didn’t know about our relationship, while the owners didn’t dare tell Jacques out of respect for the uniform. In fact Madame Grangier was very pleased to have her daughter back, and that she was living as she had done before she got married. So the Grangiers couldn’t believe it when the day after Jacques left, Marthe told them she was going back to J.…
I saw her that same day. At first I reproached her halfheartedly for being so unkind. But when I read Jacques’s first letter, I was panic-stricken. He told her how easy itwould be to get himself killed if Marthe didn’t love him any more.
I didn’t detect the ‘blackmail’ here. I believed I was responsible for a death, forgetting that that was what I had wanted. I became even more unfathomable, more unfair. Whatever we said or did opened another wound. However much Marthe told me that it was kinder not to build Jacques’s hopes up, it was me who forced her to go gently in her replies to him. It was me who dictated the only affectionate letters that he ever received from his wife. She wrote them under protest, in tears, but I threatened never to see her again if she didn’t do as I said. That Jacques should owe his only moments of joy to me helped ease my remorse.
I could tell how hollow his wish to kill himself was from the hope that overflowed from the letters in which he replied to
ours
.
I was proud of my behaviour towards poor Jacques, even though I did it for my own benefit, out of the fear of having a crime on my conscience.
XV
AFTER THESE DRAMAS CAME A TIME OF HAPPINESS. But sadly it still had a temporary feeling to it. It stemmed from my age, my lack of backbone. I didn’t have the willpower to do anything, whether to abandon Marthe, who might forget me and go back to her responsibilities, or to drive Jacques to his death. So our relationship was at the mercy of the permanent return of peace and the troops. If he threw his wife out, she would still be mine. If he kept her, I was incapable of taking her back by force. Our happiness was built on sand. But since we had no idea when the tide would come in, I just hoped that it would be as late as possible.
It was now a delighted Jacques who stood up for Marthe against her mother, who was annoyed at her going back to J.… Incited by her acrimony, the move had also roused Madame Grangier’s suspicions. And there was something else she found dubious: Marthe refused to have servants, to the horror of her family and, even more so, that of her husband’s. Yet what could parents or parents-in-law do, faced with a Jacques who was now our ally, thanks to the excuses I had provided for him through
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