Thinking that perhaps his telephone was not functioning, Monsieur Marjanne was overjoyed to have to verify this, while confusedly imagining he would gain a few minutes in doing so. Very slowly he walked to his study, then, so as to still have this task before him and because he secretly hoped to find another one, several times he lit the room then made it dark again, trying to persuade himself that the light switch was not working properly. But whichever way he flipped it, it obeyed him.
At last Robert Marjanne sat down in front of the telephone. “Let’s see if it’s working,” he thought. “Whom can I call? The Bertrins? Perhaps Claire is at their house, after all!” But at the thought that, if this were true, she would make a scene when she got home or, in the opposite instance, it would be impolite to disturb friends at this late hour simply to ask them if his telephone were working, he refrained. “The best thing would be to telephone the operator.” He picked up the receiver and requested that she call him back in a few minutes to make sure the line was functioning properly.
A moment later, the telephone rang. Even though he was absolutely certain that it was a telephone employee, he was filled with emotion.
Because he had now returned to the dining room, he suddenly noticed the clock on the mantel. It was a few minutes before eleven. All at once he realized Claire should have been back four long hours ago. The uneasiness he had been experiencing abruptly became a sharp pain. It was the middle of the night. Everything such an absence could imply filled his mind. “She must have a lover,” he thought. “She is with him right now. He doesn’t want her to go. She doesn’t have the strength to leave him. If there had been an accident, someone would have called me. It doesn’t take much common sense to guess the truth. She is at his place. They are not asleep yet. They’re talking, laughing...”
He could not shake the idea that Claire was cheating on him while he was waiting for her. Yet he wanted to go on hoping she would come home from one minute to the next. But midnight chimed, then one in the morning. Robert Marjanne was hardly recognizable.
After going to get some blankets, he lit all the lights in the living room, sank down in the lowest armchair, and covered his legs. From time to time he heard the little clocks in the apartment. The same thoughts continued to come to him, one after the other.
Daylight arrived and Robert Marjanne got up from his armchair. He had dozed off, as one does on a journey, haunted by nightmares in which Claire had turned into an insolent, drunken woman, then into a repentant wife begging her husband to forgive her. He opened the window. The sky was gray like silty water. The bare trees of boulevard Raspail, which were not yet twenty years old, did not even reach the height of a third story. An east wind, heavy with rain, was shaking them and there was something infinitely sad in seeing them sway like this on the deserted boulevard. Monsieur Marjanne closed the window. The light of dawn and the light from the streetlamps blended together, forming a single pale glow that filled the room with a strange brightness. It was seven o’clock in the morning.
* * *
As he was about to enter the dining room, he suddenly found himself face to face with his wife, who had just come home and, before going to join him, had rushed to her bedroom, no doubt to reacquaint herself with her surroundings before seeing her husband again. She had already removed her hat and coat. She smiled and said:
“I see you didn’t go to bed. You should have gone to lie down. Really! You shouldn’t worry so much just because I was held up. You know that if something serious had happened, I would not have left you like this. Naturally I would have telephoned. And since I didn’t, everything was fine.”
Claire was talking volubly. Robert Marjanne did not take his eyes off her. He was filled with immense joy at seeing his wife again, so similar to the way she was every other morning, and at the same time he was overcome with anger. But he controlled his emotions. He was aware that if he reproached her, she would immediately withdraw into silence and what he wanted to know more than anything was what she had done during this interminable night. Still, he couldn’t help asking:
“So what were you doing then?”
Still smiling, she answered:
“I’ll tell you, but wait a bit. I need to get back to my routine. It’s no joy, you know, to have to spend the night at friends’. I don’t know if it ever happened to you, but as hard as they try, it’s still uncomfortable. You just don’t feel at home. But has Irene prepared breakfast? I slept so badly and I’m starved. Come into the dining room. I’ll tell you all about it. You’ll see how odd it is, and sad at the same time.”
Claire had never spoken with such candor before and so Robert Marjanne’s suspicions only grew stronger. It seemed strange that his wife who ordinarily worried so little about what he would think of her was trying so hard to seem sincere.
“Just tell me in a few words what you did last night. Afterwards, we won’t mention it again. It will be over, buried...”
“It’s impossible in a few words. I have to tell you everything. How do you expect me to explain everything that happened in a few words?”
“Well, simply tell me where you slept. That’s all I want to know.”
“Give me time. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. You’ll know everything.”
“What’s the harm in telling me right away? It can’t be that complicated. Just tell me where you slept. I don’t need to know the rest.”
“You should hear yourself! As if I had done who-knows-what!”
“All I’m asking is for you to tell me where you spent the night.”
“I’ll tell you everything or nothing,” Claire said drily.
Robert Marjanne then got the feeling that the story his wife was about to tell had been invented out of whole cloth and that, just like when she had told it to herself, she needed not to break off, not to be interrupted.
“Well then, tell me everything.”
“Now I’ll tell you everything because you are being reasonable. I have nothing to hide. Obviously if I had wanted to do something that was not right I would go about it differently. I’m not a child. Isn’t that so, Robert, that I’d go about it differently?”
She smiled again and continued:
“I told you yesterday, I think, when I left you, that I was going to spend the afternoon at Madeleine’s. So I went to her place, as you know. She was alone. Another girl came a little later, Maud. Have I already mentioned her to you?”
It seemed to Robert Marjanne that his wife was stretching out the true parts so that the lie would blend into the stream of words that preceded it.
“No, you never mentioned her to me. Who is she?”
“Let me finish first. I’ll explain later who she is.”
Claire said these words more gently. The fact that her husband showed interest in a minor point of her story seemed to reassure her. No doubt for this reason she brought the conversation back to Maud.
“All right, I’ll tell you right away. Then you’ll understand better what happened next. Maud is the daughter of an Englishman who has lived in Paris for, I think, twenty years. He’s a real character. He adores France.”
Robert Marjanne surmised that his wife really knew this Englishman and his daughter and that it was because their eccentricity had struck her that she had put them into her story: their exceptional nature would make it easier to accept the exceptional nature of the story she was preparing to tell.
“But why didn’t you come home?”
“Wait, I said. Let me explain everything or I won’t say anything.”
He was suffering so much at the thought that she had spent the night with a man that all he wanted was to be convinced of the contrary. He coaxed her to go on.