The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir Page A

pulling him to pieces.”
    “No. I’m not pulling him to pieces. The more I think it over, the more excuses I find for him. I see just how much we weighed him down: in the end he had to assert himself against us, at any price. And then talking of Algeria—he was sickeningly disillusioned over that. Not one of those fellows he endangered himself for has ever taken any notice of him since. And the great man there is de Gaulle.”
    We sat on the grass just under the fort. I listened to André’s voice, calm and convincing; we could talk to one another again, and something melted inside me. For the first time I thought of Philippe with no anger. With no pleasure, either, but tranquilly: perhaps because André was suddenly so near to me that the picture of Philippe was blurred and indistinct. “We did weigh him down,” I said, candidly. “Do you think I ought to see him again?” I asked.
    “It would hurt him immensely if you were to go on not being on speaking terms with him: and what would be the point of it?”
    “I have no wish to hurt him. I feel indifferent, that’s all.”
    “Oh, of course, it will never be the same between him and us.”
    I looked at André. It seemed to me that between him and me everything was the same again already. The moon was shining, and so was the little star that faithfully accompaniesit: a great peace came down upon me.
Little star that I see, Drawn by the moon
. The old words, just as they were first written, were there on my lips. They were a link joining me to the past centuries, when the stars shone exactly as they do today. And this rebirth and this permanence gave me a feeling of eternity. The world seemed to me as fresh and new as it had been in the first ages, and this moment sufficed to itself. I was there, and I was looking at the tiled roofs at our feet, bathed in the moonlight, looking at them for no reason, looking at them for the pleasure of seeing them. There was a piercing charm in this lack of involvement. “That’s the great thing about writing,” I said. “Pictures lose their shape; their colors fade. But words you carry away with you.”
    “What makes you think of that?” asked André.
    I quoted the two lines of
Aucassin et Nicolette
, and I added regretfully, “How lovely the nights are here!”
    “Yes. It’s a pity you didn’t come sooner.”
    I started. “A pity? But you didn’t want me to come!”
    “Me? I like that. It was you who refused. When I said to you, ‘Why not leave for Villeneuve right away?’ you answered, ‘What a good idea. Do go.’ ”
    “That was not how it was at all. You said—and I can remember your words exactly—‘What I should like is to go to Villeneuve.’ You were sick of me: all you wanted to do was to get the hell out of it.”
    “You’re insane! My obvious meaning was I should like us to go to Villeneuve. And you replied, ‘Go on, then,’ in a voice that quite chilled me. But even so, I pressed you.”
    “Oh, just as a matter of form. You certainly reckoned on my refusing.”
    “Not in the very least.”
    He was so sincere that doubt seized me. Could I have been mistaken? The scene was there fixed in my mind: I could not make it change. But I was certain he was not lying.
    “How stupid it is,” I said. “It gave me such a jar when I saw you had made up your mind to go off without me.”
    “It is stupid,” said André. “I wonder why you thought that?”
    I reflected. “I did not trust you.”
    “Because I had lied to you?”
    “You seemed to me to have changed for some time past.”
    “In what way?”
    “You were playing at being an old man.”
    “It was not a game—you said to me yourself, ‘I’m growing old,’ yesterday.”
    “But you let yourself go. In all sorts of ways.”
    “For example?”
    “Mannerisms. That way of messing about with your gum.”
    “Oh, that.…”
    “What?”
    “My jaw is slightly infected just there; if it gets bad my bridge will go and I shall have to wear