The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet

nakedness. When I woke, seeing she was uncovered, I was afraid she might be cold. I touched her. Her body was burning. To see her asleep gave me exquisite sensual pleasure. After ten minutes I found it unbearable. I kissed her on the shoulder. She didn’t stir. A second, less demure kiss had the effect of an alarm clock. She gave a start and, rubbing her eyes, she smothered me with kisses, like someone you love who you find in bed after dreaming they have died. Except that Marthe thought that what she had been dreaming about was true, and found me there when she woke up.
    It was eleven o’clock already. We were drinking our chocolate when we heard the doorbell. I thought of Jacques: “Let’s hope he’s got a gun.” For someone so afraid of death, I wasn’t shaking. On the contrary, I would have been happy for it to be Jacques, as long as he killed us. To me any other outcome seemed absurd.
    To contemplate death calmly only makes sense if we do it alone. Death as a couple isn’t death, not even for unbelievers. What distresses us is not losing life, but losing whatgives it meaning. When a loved one is our life, what difference is there between living together and dying together?
    There wasn’t time for me to see myself as a hero, because thinking that Jacques might just kill Marthe, or only me, I was busy calculating how self-centred I was. Of these two tragedies did I even know which was the worst?
    Since Marthe didn’t get up, I thought I’d made a mistake, and that someone had rung the owners’ bell. But then the doorbell went again.
    “Be quiet!” she whispered. “Don’t move, it must be my mother. I’d completely forgotten that she was going to drop by after mass.”
    I was glad to witness one of her sacrifices. If a mistress or a friend is a few minutes late in coming to meet me, I straightway imagine they have died. Assuming that her mother was experiencing a similar anxiety, I enjoyed it to the full, as well as the knowledge that I was responsible for her fears.
    After the sound of a short conversation (Madame Grangier had obviously asked the people downstairs if they had seen her daughter that morning), we heard the garden gate closing. Marthe looked through the shutters. “Yes, it was her,” she said. At the sight of Madame Grangier departing, missal in hand, worrying about her daughter’s unaccountable absence, I couldn’t help being pleased too. She turned round and took another look at the closed shutters.

X
    NOW THAT I HAD NOTHING LEFT TO WISH FOR, I sensed I was beginning to be unfair. I put on a show of being upset that Marthe could deceive her mother without a qualm, and in my dishonesty I rebuked her for being able to lie. And yet love, which is selfishness in duplicate, sacrifices everything for itself, exists on lies. Driven by the same demon, I chastised her for not telling me that her husband was due back. Up till now I had kept my tyranny in check, not believing I had any right to rule Marthe. My harshness occasionally abated. “It won’t be long before you loathe me,” I groaned. “I’m like your husband, just as cruel.” “He’s not cruel,” she said. I started up again with renewed force: “So you’re cheating on both of us, tell me which one you love the most—but don’t worry—in a week’s time you’ll be able to cheat on me with him.”
    In tears, she bit her lip: “What have I done to make you so unkind? Don’t spoil our first day of happiness, I beg of you.”
    “You can’t love me very much if today is your first day of happiness.”
    Blows like this injure the one who strikes them. I wasn’t thinking about what I was saying, yet still felt the need to say it. I found it impossible to explain to Marthe that mylove was growing. It had undoubtedly reached the age of ingratitude, and my vicious taunts were love maturing into passion. I was in pain. I implored her to forget my tirade.

XI
    THE OWNERS’ MAID SLIPPED SOME LETTERS UNDER the door. Marthe picked