That was all I managed to say. I could tell I was headed for disaster but all the courage I could muster was that of avoidance. ‘Let’s wait until tomorrow.’ I didn’t want it to happen under these conditions. Not with a man I did not know. Not for the first time.
Madame M. must have thought I was trying to wriggle out of it, but that wasn’t it. I just needed some time. I would keep my promise. I couldn’t go back on my word now, I had never seen her so happy. Besides, I wasn’t afraid. With all her explanations it felt like I had an appointment at the doctor’s. No more, no less. And that was something I was used to.
Just to be alone now. And stare at a canvas. Not to think, just not to have to think. Madame M. seemed embarrassed. When I went into the room without walls, I understood why. A bed had grown there overnight. And the mirror had vanished behind a drape that was even redder and newer than all the others. I could not stay in that room. As I walked down the driveway I passed her husband. I did not dare look at him.
But the next morning I kept our appointment. And everything went just as she had hoped. I became pregnant ‘with the efficiency of a virgin’.
We left three months later. Before my clothed body could betray us. She had planned everything. We would leave the village for the duration of my pregnancy and come back after the birth. And life would go on as before. As if nothing had happened, except that at last in her arms she would be holding the infant she had so desired. How could I have believed things could be that simple?
Throughout her entire story Annie had been pacing the room, her cup of chicory between her palms. As if suddenly reminded of its existence, she put the cup down on the table and came to sit next to me again.
‘You are the first person I have ever told this story to, Louis. I wrote it in a letter to my parents. But they never received it. Even though Sophie swore to me that she would post it. I shall never forgive her.’
Annie was probably expecting me to ask her questions. ‘What happened?’ ‘Where is your child?’ But as a poor jealous man I could find nothing better than to insult her.
‘That kind Monsieur M. was no luckier than I was. Well, it looks like one time only is all any of us can expect from you!’
Annie’s expression grew tense, she had tears in her eyes. But for once I didn’t care – about her, about what had happened, about her unhappiness; all I could think of was myself and I wanted to make her pay for what I felt she still owed me, despite the years: my unrequited love.
Her wedding band was an offence to my eyes. She must not have known how to tell me she was married.
The church bell struck seven. Annie suddenly felt for the pocket of her cardigan. She said she had forgotten to leave the keys for her colleague who was supposed to close up the shop where they worked, she was sorry, she had to go back there, she couldn’t afford to get herself sacked. She asked me to wait for her; she had so many things to tell me. She begged me to forgive her if she had hurt me; she hadn’t meant to. She was distraught. She hurriedly put on her shoes and went out, shoelaces trailing. I listened to her footsteps as they faded away on the stairs; I had not lost my schoolboy habits.
I had been deeply troubled upon seeing her again; for almost three years I had believed that she was married or lost or even dead, and now she had reappeared in my life without warning. And she was telling me everything. I certainly had not reacted in the way she expected. But I already knew her story.
What Annie didn’t know was that Sophie had indeed kept her word, and Annie’s mother had indeed received her letter.
I can still see the anxious old woman dripping with rain under the awning outside my house, holding a huge umbrella. It was pouring that day. She handed me the letter. I immediately recognised Annie’s handwriting. The envelope contained several pages of closely written handwriting, on both sides, as if she had been afraid she would not have enough paper. She had already been away with Madame M. for several months.
Eugénie looked distraught.
‘This is so worrying, such a long letter, something must have happened!’
‘For a mother, too long or too short is always a bad sign…’ I replied, in what I hoped was a cheerful tone. But the length of the letter surprised me as well. Up until now Annie had never sent her anything but very laconic postcards. My expression must have changed.
‘What has happened? Louis, tell me what is going on!’
The time it took for me to look up from the letter and meet her gaze it was done, I had already lied.
‘Nothing. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. But I’m late, please forgive me. Go on home, I’ll stop by and read it to you tonight.’
And I had rushed to my room with the letter in my hand, in order to go over it on my own. To understand how all this could have happened.
‘…The next day I came as agreed and everything went just as Madame M. had hoped. I became pregnant “with the efficiency of a virgin”. I will be giving birth in a few days. The child will be called Louis if it’s a boy, and Louise if it’s a girl. I am so afraid, afraid of dying and never seeing you again. I love you. I hope you can forgive me.’
These were, more or less, the only words Annie had written to her parents that she had not repeated to me in her account.
I copied out these few pages into an exercise book, to have a record of them, then I sat under the awning and watched as they melted in the rain. I had decided not to read them to Eugénie: it would be too cruel, she was too fragile. Annie pregnant with another woman’s baby: she could not bear it. Even I could not understand how it was possible – how could she have allowed that man to make her pregnant?
As I watched the raindrops softening the paper I tried to find comfort in the thought that one often regrets confiding in others out of fear, and Annie would be relieved to know what I had done. And besides, I was not destroying the truth, merely deferring it. If by the time she got back from her journey she still wanted her mother to know what had happened, then she would tell her. But at that moment I sincerely thought I was acting for the best as far as everyone was concerned.
The letter was illegible. The ink had spread in huge blots. I apologised ten times over to Eugénie, I had left the letter on my desk, I hadn’t noticed that the window was open, I was so sorry.
So I had to make up another story – the war had just begun, the confusion on the front, all sorts of things which – and this did surprise me – Annie had not mentioned at all in her letter. But I reckoned that with everything she was going through she must have her mind on other things, and then again perhaps in the South of France the tension was less noticeable than here.
Eugénie nevertheless found my version rather short in comparison to the length of the letter. I replied that things always seemed shorter when spoken than when they were written. I was ashamed to be taking advantage of her weakness, but I knew she would not say anything. I was right: she nodded her head humbly, without daring to ask anything else. She took my fabricated rule for a golden one, and merely remarked happily that her little girl had regained something of her talkativeness.
I had never asked Eugénie why she had picked me to read her daughter’s letters to her. Had she sensed I was a young admirer who would be easy to corner? Did she hope I would read them out loud without paying attention? Or that I would talk to her about them, thus relating the precious contents?
‘I don’t know how to read.’
She could not have asked me the time of day in a more offhand manner, but bent over on the stool in the passage she eventually murmured that it was a real torment for her. No matter how many hours she spent staring at Annie’s letters, she couldn’t understand a thing. At night she would go to bed hoping for a miracle, but in the morning nothing had changed. She felt utterly stupid because of a pile of letters. She had never told anyone. Neither her husband. Nor Annie. She had always managed to keep them from finding