‘Well, after all, you don’t give a damn,’ said Pierre.
‘You’ll smile at her winningly,’ said Xavière.
‘All right,’ said Françoise. ‘You’ll have to think of a good excuse for us.’
‘I’ll try,’ grumbled Pierre.
‘Then we’ll wait for you in my room,’ said Françoise.
They went upstairs.
‘It’s an afternoon wasted,’ said Pierre. ‘There won’t be enough time left to go anywhere after we leave the exhibition.’
‘I told you she couldn’t learn how to live,’ said Françoise. She walked over to the looking-glass: with this upswept coiffure it was impossible to keep the back of one’s neck looking neat. ‘If only she doesn’t insist on moving.’
‘You haven’t got to move with her,’ said Pierre. He seemed furious. He had always been so cheerful with Françoise that she had almost reached the point of forgetting that he was not good-tempered, that his fits of anger were legendary at the theatre. If he took this affair as a personal offence, the afternoon was going to be grim.
‘But I will; you know that. She won’t insist, but she’ll sink into black despair.’
Françoise glanced over the room.
‘My nice little hotel. Fortunately, I can rely on her inertia.’
Pierre walked over to the pile of manuscripts stacked on the table.
‘You know,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll hang on to Monsieur le Vent. This fellow interests me, he ought to be encouraged. I’ll ask him to have dinner with us one of these evenings so that you can form some opinion of him.’
‘I also want to look at Hyacinthe,’ said Françoise. ‘I think it’s promising.’
‘Show it to me,’ said Pierre. He began to look through the manuscript and Françoise leaned over his shoulder to read with him. She was not in a good mood: alone with Pierre, she would have got the private view over and done with very quickly, but with Xavière about, everything tended to become burdensome, it made one feel that one was walking through life with clods of clay on the soles of one’s shoes. Pierre should never have decided to wait for her; even he looked as though he had got out of the wrong side of the bed. Nearly half an hour passed before Xavière knocked. Then they hurried downstairs.
‘Where do you want to go?’ said Françoise.
‘I don’t mind,’ said Xavière.
‘Since we’ve only an hour,’ said Pierre, ‘let’s go to the Dôme.’
‘How cold it is,’ said Xavière, tightening her scarf round her face.
‘It’s only a few steps from here,’ said Françoise.
‘We haven’t got the same conception of distance,’ said Xavière whose face was screwed up.
‘Or of time,’ said Pierre dryly.
Françoise was beginning to read Xavière very well. Xavière knew that she was in the wrong. She thought they were angry with her and she was taking the lead; and besides, her attempts at moving had worn her out. Françoise wanted to take her arm: wherever they had gone on Friday night, they had walked arm in arm, and kept in step.
‘No,’ said Xavière, ‘it’s much faster on one’s own.’
Pierre’s face darkened again, Françoise was afraid he was going to lose his temper. They sat down at the back of the café.
‘You know,’ said Françoise, ‘this private view won’t be at all interesting. Aunt’s protégés never have an ounce of talent, she’s never been known to fail in that respect.’
‘I don’t care a hang about that,’ said Xavière. ‘It’s the reception I’m interested in. Pictures always bore me stiff.’
‘That’s because you’ve never seen any,’ said Françoise. ‘If you were to come with me to exhibitions, or even go to the Louvre …’
‘That wouldn’t make any difference,’ said Xavière. She made a wry face. ‘A picture is so arid, it’s completely flat.’
‘If you were to get to know a little about it, I’m sure you would enjoy it,’ said Françoise.
‘You mean I would understand why I ought to enjoy it,’ said Xavière. ‘I’d never be satisfied with that. The day when I no longer feel anything, I’m not going to look for excuses to feel.’
‘What you call feeling is really a way of understanding,’ said Françoise. ‘You like music, well then …!’
Xavière stopped her short.
‘You know, when people speak about good and bad music, it goes right over my head,’ she said with aggressive modesty. ‘I don’t understand the first thing about it. I like the notes for themselves; the sound alone is enough for me.’ She looked Françoise in the eye. ‘The pleasures of the mind are repulsive to me.’
When Xavière was being obstinate it was useless to argue. Françoise looked reproachfully at Pierre; after all, it was he who had wanted to wait for Xavière, he could at least join in the conversation, instead of entrenching himself behind a sardonic smile.
‘I warn you that the reception, as you call it, is not a bit amusing,’ said Françoise. ‘Just a lot of people exchanging polite remarks.’
‘Oh, still there’ll be a crowd, and excitement,’ said Xavière in a tone of passionate insistence.
‘Do you feel a need for excitement now?’
‘Of course I need it!’ said Xavière, and a wild untamed look glinted in her eyes. ‘Shut up in that room from morning till night, why, I’ll go mad! I can’t stand it there any more, you can have no idea how happy I’ll be to leave that place.’
‘Who prevents you from going out?’ asked Pierre.
‘You say that there isn’t any fun in going dancing with women, but Begramian or Gerbert would be only too glad to take you, and they dance very well,’ said Françoise.
Xavière shook her head.
‘Once you decide to have a good time to order, it’s always pitiful.’
‘You want everything to fall into your lap like manna from heaven,’ said Françoise, ‘you don’t deign to lift your little finger, and then you proceed to take it out on everyone. Obviously …’
‘There must be some countries in the world,’ said Xavière, as if in a dream, ‘warm countries – Greece or Sicily – where it surely isn’t necessary to lift a finger.’ She scowled. ‘Here you have to grab with both hands – and to get what?’
‘You have to do the same out there,’ said Françoise.
Xavière’s eyes began to sparkle.
‘Where is that red island that’s completely surrounded by boiling water?’ she said hungrily.
‘Santorin, one of the isles of Greece,’ said Françoise. ‘But that isn’t exactly what I told you. Only the cliffs are red, and the sea boils only between two small black islets thrown up by volcanic eruptions. Oh, I remember,’ she said, warming to her subject, ‘a lake of sulphurous water in the midst of the lava. It was all yellow and edged by a peninsula as black as anthracite and on the other side of this black strip the sea was a dazzling blue.’
Xavière looked at her with rapt attention.
‘When I think of all you’ve seen,’ she said in a voice filled with resentment.
‘You