“He wouldn’t be able to cure me.”
My voice was filled with sadness as I pronounced this sentence. In my mind, it had a different meaning than the one my girlfriend heard and, like all such sentences, it required a disabused tone. I like those sentences, and you will see what I did with them.
“Go lie down now.”
“What’s the point?”
“Come now, don’t be so discouraged. The minute you are a tiny bit ill you think you’re going to die.”
“I wish it were true.”
My girlfriend, despite all my efforts, did not notice that my pain was entirely emotional. I would have wanted her to see it for herself so I could deny it feebly, and in the end explain to her why, so that she could reassure me. But she did not notice.
She undressed me by force, as badly as I would have undressed her.
“Now lie down. Close your eyes, my darling. I’ll bring you something warm.”
I obeyed. I felt I would not be able to keep what I had seen to myself. In spite of how sure I was of my girlfriend’s unfaithfulness, I still wanted to believe that a word from her would dispel my certainty.
“Henriette, what did you do this afternoon?”
“Errands of no interest to you, my little lamb. I brought you the papers. You see, I thought of you.”
“But what kind of errands?”
“How jealous you are, Jean.”
“I’m not jealous, my darling. I’m interested in everything you do.”
“Well, in that case: I went to the milliner’s. Then to Anne’s. We went for a walk together. Then she felt ill. We went into a café. And you know, when I was at the milliner’s, there was some old man who waited for me for at least an hour at the door. If you had seen him! He was looking at hats, but how he looked at me! In the café, it was the same thing. Two young men wanted to sit down at our table. You can imagine how Anne, who wasn’t feeling well, sent them packing!”
“And if she had been feeling well?”
“Oh! You are mad! You see everything in a distorted way. You know I would never talk to a man I didn’t know.”
“And you didn’t go down rue Saint-Lazare?”
As I said these words, I stared at my girlfriend, as much as one can when one is lying down. She answered me without hesitating at alclass="underline"
“No, why?”
“Because I saw you.”
“You saw me?’
“Yes.”
“So you went out? That was not wise, sick as you are. You should have told me you wanted to go out. We would have gone out together.”
“I saw you.”
“You’re mistaken. What would I have been doing on rue Saint-Lazare? I was not even in that neighborhood. You dreamed it, and it doesn’t surprise me, my adorable little lamb.”
“I saw you in a taxi.”
“Well, that takes the cake! In a taxi, now! I swear I wasn’t. If I had taken a taxi, I wouldn’t hide it. And why would I have taken a taxi?”
“To kiss a man.”
My girlfriend, who was stirring a cup of tea, stopped. She looked at me with large, surprised eyes in which there was that hint of calm that precedes indignation.
“To kiss a man?”
“Yes.”
“My poor Jean, what is the matter with you? You are going mad, mad, mad. How can you think such a thing of me? Me, kiss another man? So you take me for a streetwalker? You are mad, completely mad.”
“I saw you.”
“Listen, Jean. You don’t know what you’re saying. You have a fever. You are so jealous that you’re losing your mind.”
“I saw you. Do you understand what that means? I saw you, you who are in front of me. I saw you kissing a man.”
“You’re lying. I swear on my life that I didn’t take a taxi, and that I have never kissed a man besides you.”
“But I saw you.”
“That’s impossible. What would keep me here if not love? We are not married. If I loved someone else, I would not be able to put on such a loathsome act, I would be incapable of concealing it. You know how frank I am. If I loved someone else, I would tell you. Even if it would make you suffer, I would tell you. You could not have seen me. It’s impossible. I belong to you alone.”
“I saw you.”
“Perhaps you saw someone who looks like me.”
I had been waiting for these words for several minutes and yet I did not know how to answer them immediately. I was afraid of them. I knew that they alone were capable of making me doubt my eyes without providing proof of my girlfriend’s innocence.
You, dear sir, will perhaps think what my friends thought, that I fell victim to a resemblance. When one is trying to console someone, one always manages to make statements that one would not believe oneself. To claim I fell victim to a resemblance is such a statement.
Let me tell you, sir, that I recognized my girlfriend, not just her clothing, but her neck, the color of her hair.
“You are the one I saw in the taxi.”
“It was not me. I told you exactly what I did and when. You can ask Anne if I spent the afternoon with her. You can come with me to the milliner’s, and to the café where we went when she felt ill. You can ask the waiter, if it’s the same one, what we had to drink. I cannot do any more, my Jean, to prove to you that I am faithful.”
I listened to these words without believing them. I know I would have got lost trying to figure out my girlfriend’s schedule. Yes, I could have seen a waiter who would have told me “It seems to me that I waited on those two women,” or who would not have remembered. My girlfriend would have shown me the table where she sat. But what would that have proved? The fact remained that I had seen her, in this taxi, kissing a man.
Or if she had said to me, “Yes, I took a taxi with Anne and I kissed her,” I would have believed that. I did not have enough time to see the person who was with my girlfriend and to be sure it was a man. But the fact that she denied so obstinately that she had taken a taxi proves to me she was unfaithful.
“I saw you.”
“Listen to me, Jean. I swear to you on our love, on your life, on my parents’ life, that I did not take a taxi, that I was not unfaithful to you, that I love you more than anything in the world, more than my family, and I am ready to do anything you tell me, I am your slave and your wife. I swear to you, my love, that if you were to die tomorrow, I could not survive. You are my sole joy in this world. I only live for you and through you. Look me in the eyes. You see, I don’t lower my lids. Do you believe if I had done what you say I would not die of shame beneath your gaze?”
Dear sir, I wound up believing my girlfriend. I wound up believing her but, in spite of everything, some doubt has remained in me. It is this doubt I am asking you to drive out. I repeated word for word what the woman whom I still love said. I also told you that, while I wound up believing my girlfriend, I am still sure I saw her in the taxi. It seems that nothing can shake this certainty. And yet, Henriette loves me so, she is so honest! Let me tell you as well that, if you had been in my shoes, you certainly would have recognized my girlfriend. You would have recognized her as I did. So it is useless to tell me that perhaps I did not see clearly.
Before you can reach your decision, you probably think you will need to know my girlfriend better. It is not worth the trouble. You know her. She is unable to do anything behind my back. She loves me. You were able to see that. Do not think I am blinded by love. She is exactly as I have presented her to you. And as sure as I am of having seen her kiss someone else, I am just as sure of her total love.
I am waiting, dear sir, for a letter from you that will allow me to know the truth. If you are not sensitive to my pain, perhaps you will respond with indifference. Know that I shall read your words with the same attention, for I am hoping nonetheless to find in what you say the word that will bring me peace.