them up. There were two from Jacques. As if in reply to my doubts, she said: “Here, do what you like with them.” I felt ashamed. I asked her to read them, although to keep them to herself. With one of those instincts that drive us to the worst acts of bravado, Marthe tore up one of the envelopes. It must have been a long letter, because it didn’t tear easily. Her gesture gave me another opportunity to rebuke her. I deplored her bravado, the regrets that she would surely feel about it. Despite everything I made an effort and, not wishing her to tear up the second letter, I kept it, because judging from this performance it wasn’t out of the question that she might become unpleasant. At my request she read it. It might have been instinct that made her tear up the first letter, but not which made her say, after glancing through the second: “This is our reward from Heaven for not tearing up the letter. Jacques says that all leave has been cancelled in his sector, he won’t be coming for at least a month.”
Only love can forgive such lapses of taste.
This husband was beginning to get in my way, more so than if he had been there and we had had to be on ourguard. His letter suddenly assumed the proportions of a ghost. We had lunch late. At about five o’clock we went for a walk by the river. Marthe was astonished when I pulled out my basket from a clump of grass in full view of the sentry. She found the story about the basket very funny. I was no longer afraid of ridicule. We walked along, oblivious to the unseemly way we were dressed, clinging to each other. Our fingers intertwined. This first warm, sunny Sunday had brought the walkers out in their straw hats, like the rain does mushrooms. People who knew Marthe didn’t dare say hello to her, but she greeted them quite guilessly, unmindful of anything. They must have viewed it as preening. She questioned me about how I had escaped from the house. She laughed, but then her face clouded; squeezing my hand as tightly as she could, she thanked me for taking so many risks. We went back to her apartment to drop off the basket. In actual fact I had a role in mind for this basket, by shipping it off to our troops as a food parcel in order to give these adventures a fitting conclusion. But the idea was so appalling that I saved it for myself alone.
Marthe wanted to go along by the Marne as far as La Varenne. We had dinner opposite the Île d’Amour. I promised to take her to the Museum of the Écu de France, the first museum I’d ever visited when I was a little boy, and which had left me spellbound. I told her about it as if it were something interesting. Yet when we came to the conclusion that the museum was a hoax, I didn’t want to admit how much I had been taken in by it. Fulbert’s scissors! Everything! I had believed everything. I claimed I was just having a harmless little joke with her. Marthe didn’t understand, as making jokes wasn’t something I normally did. To be honest the disappointment left me depressed.I thought: “As certain of Marthe’s love as I am at the moment, maybe I’ll find it’s just a sham like the Museum of the Écu de France!”
For I did often doubt her love. I sometimes wondered if I wasn’t a hobby for her, a passing fancy that she could give up overnight, when peacetime summoned her back to her responsibilities. And yet, I thought, there are times when lips, eyes, can’t lie. Undoubtedly. When they are drunk, even the least generous of men will get angry if you refuse to accept their watch, their wallet. In this respect they are behaving as candidly as when they are sober. The times at which we can’t lie are precisely those when we lie the most, especially to ourselves. To believe a woman ‘at a time when she can’t lie’ is like believing in the feigned generosity of a miser.
This clear-sightedness of mine was merely a more dangerous form of my naivety. I saw myself as not very naive, and yet I was, in another way,
Only love can forgive such lapses of taste.
This husband was beginning to get in my way, more so than if he had been there and we had had to be on ourguard. His letter suddenly assumed the proportions of a ghost. We had lunch late. At about five o’clock we went for a walk by the river. Marthe was astonished when I pulled out my basket from a clump of grass in full view of the sentry. She found the story about the basket very funny. I was no longer afraid of ridicule. We walked along, oblivious to the unseemly way we were dressed, clinging to each other. Our fingers intertwined. This first warm, sunny Sunday had brought the walkers out in their straw hats, like the rain does mushrooms. People who knew Marthe didn’t dare say hello to her, but she greeted them quite guilessly, unmindful of anything. They must have viewed it as preening. She questioned me about how I had escaped from the house. She laughed, but then her face clouded; squeezing my hand as tightly as she could, she thanked me for taking so many risks. We went back to her apartment to drop off the basket. In actual fact I had a role in mind for this basket, by shipping it off to our troops as a food parcel in order to give these adventures a fitting conclusion. But the idea was so appalling that I saved it for myself alone.
Marthe wanted to go along by the Marne as far as La Varenne. We had dinner opposite the Île d’Amour. I promised to take her to the Museum of the Écu de France, the first museum I’d ever visited when I was a little boy, and which had left me spellbound. I told her about it as if it were something interesting. Yet when we came to the conclusion that the museum was a hoax, I didn’t want to admit how much I had been taken in by it. Fulbert’s scissors! Everything! I had believed everything. I claimed I was just having a harmless little joke with her. Marthe didn’t understand, as making jokes wasn’t something I normally did. To be honest the disappointment left me depressed.I thought: “As certain of Marthe’s love as I am at the moment, maybe I’ll find it’s just a sham like the Museum of the Écu de France!”
For I did often doubt her love. I sometimes wondered if I wasn’t a hobby for her, a passing fancy that she could give up overnight, when peacetime summoned her back to her responsibilities. And yet, I thought, there are times when lips, eyes, can’t lie. Undoubtedly. When they are drunk, even the least generous of men will get angry if you refuse to accept their watch, their wallet. In this respect they are behaving as candidly as when they are sober. The times at which we can’t lie are precisely those when we lie the most, especially to ourselves. To believe a woman ‘at a time when she can’t lie’ is like believing in the feigned generosity of a miser.
This clear-sightedness of mine was merely a more dangerous form of my naivety. I saw myself as not very naive, and yet I was, in another way,
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