“Le is in a state of crisis,” and when he then got a D in an exam she wanted to haul him off to a psychologist. I managed to prevent this by first of all telling him all I knew about this thing men and women do together and then by giving him so much help with his homework that the next time he got a C and then a B—and then my mother didn’t think the psychologist was necessary any more.
Marie put on the dark green dress, and although she had trouble with the zipper I didn’t get up to help her: it was so wonderful to watch the way she reached behind her with her hands, her white skin, her dark hair, and the dark green dress; I was glad too to see that she didn’t get irritated; she finally came over to the bed, and I raised myself up and closed the zipper. I asked her why she got up so terribly early, and she said her father did not go to sleep properly till nearly dawn and would stay in bed till nine, and she had to take in the newspapers and open up the shop, as sometimes children came before mass tobuy notebooks, pencils, or candy, and “besides,” she said, “you had better be out of the house by half-past seven. I’m going to make coffee now, and in five minutes you can come down quietly into the kitchen.” I felt almost married when I went down to the kitchen and Marie poured me out some coffee and buttered me a roll. She shook her head and said: “Face not washed, hair not combed, do you always come to breakfast like that?” and I said, yes, not even at school had they managed to get me to wash regularly in the early morning.
“Then what do you do?” she asked, “you must freshen up somehow?”
“I always rub myself down with Eau de Cologne,” I said.
“That’s pretty expensive,” she said, and immediately blushed.
“Yes,” I said, “but I always get it as a gift, a big bottle, from an uncle who has an agency for the stuff.” In my embarrassment I looked round the kitchen I knew so well: it was small and dark, just a sort of back room to the shop; in the corner stood the little coal stove where Marie had kept the briquettes glowing the way all housewives do: in the evening she wraps them in wet newspaper, in the morning she stokes up the embers and gets the fire going with kindling and new briquettes. I hate the smell of briquette ash which hangs about the streets in the mornings and on this particular morning hung about the stuffy little kitchen. It was so cramped that whenever Marie took the coffee pot off the stove she had to get up and push the chair out of the way, and probably her grandmother and her mother had had to do exactly the same thing. This morning the kitchen I knew so well seemed for the first time workaday. Perhaps I was realizing for the first time what this workaday world meant: having to do things which are no longer determined by the desire to do them. I had no desire to leave this cramped house ever again and assume any obligations outside; the obligation to confess what I had done with Marie to her friends, to Leo, even my parents would hearof it somewhere. I would have liked to stay here and sell candy and writing pads to the end of my days, get into bed with Marie at night and sleep with her, really sleep with her, as we had the last few hours before we got up, with her hands in my armpits. I found it terrible and magnificent, this workaday world, with coffee pot and rolls and Marie’s washed-out blue and white apron over her green dress, and it seemed to me that it was only women who took the workaday world as much for granted as their bodies. I was proud that Marie was my woman and I did not feel quite as grown-up as I would have to behave from now on. I stood up, went round the table, took Marie in my arms and said: “Do you remember how you got up during the night and washed the sheets?” She nodded. “And I won’t forget,” she said, “how you warmed my hands in your armpits—now you must go, it is nearly half-past seven, and the first children
Marie put on the dark green dress, and although she had trouble with the zipper I didn’t get up to help her: it was so wonderful to watch the way she reached behind her with her hands, her white skin, her dark hair, and the dark green dress; I was glad too to see that she didn’t get irritated; she finally came over to the bed, and I raised myself up and closed the zipper. I asked her why she got up so terribly early, and she said her father did not go to sleep properly till nearly dawn and would stay in bed till nine, and she had to take in the newspapers and open up the shop, as sometimes children came before mass tobuy notebooks, pencils, or candy, and “besides,” she said, “you had better be out of the house by half-past seven. I’m going to make coffee now, and in five minutes you can come down quietly into the kitchen.” I felt almost married when I went down to the kitchen and Marie poured me out some coffee and buttered me a roll. She shook her head and said: “Face not washed, hair not combed, do you always come to breakfast like that?” and I said, yes, not even at school had they managed to get me to wash regularly in the early morning.
“Then what do you do?” she asked, “you must freshen up somehow?”
“I always rub myself down with Eau de Cologne,” I said.
“That’s pretty expensive,” she said, and immediately blushed.
“Yes,” I said, “but I always get it as a gift, a big bottle, from an uncle who has an agency for the stuff.” In my embarrassment I looked round the kitchen I knew so well: it was small and dark, just a sort of back room to the shop; in the corner stood the little coal stove where Marie had kept the briquettes glowing the way all housewives do: in the evening she wraps them in wet newspaper, in the morning she stokes up the embers and gets the fire going with kindling and new briquettes. I hate the smell of briquette ash which hangs about the streets in the mornings and on this particular morning hung about the stuffy little kitchen. It was so cramped that whenever Marie took the coffee pot off the stove she had to get up and push the chair out of the way, and probably her grandmother and her mother had had to do exactly the same thing. This morning the kitchen I knew so well seemed for the first time workaday. Perhaps I was realizing for the first time what this workaday world meant: having to do things which are no longer determined by the desire to do them. I had no desire to leave this cramped house ever again and assume any obligations outside; the obligation to confess what I had done with Marie to her friends, to Leo, even my parents would hearof it somewhere. I would have liked to stay here and sell candy and writing pads to the end of my days, get into bed with Marie at night and sleep with her, really sleep with her, as we had the last few hours before we got up, with her hands in my armpits. I found it terrible and magnificent, this workaday world, with coffee pot and rolls and Marie’s washed-out blue and white apron over her green dress, and it seemed to me that it was only women who took the workaday world as much for granted as their bodies. I was proud that Marie was my woman and I did not feel quite as grown-up as I would have to behave from now on. I stood up, went round the table, took Marie in my arms and said: “Do you remember how you got up during the night and washed the sheets?” She nodded. “And I won’t forget,” she said, “how you warmed my hands in your armpits—now you must go, it is nearly half-past seven, and the first children
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