Holiday in Kerdruc from time to time. Lothar in early retirement. Life in Celle.
The taxi braked. “There’s been a crash up ahead,” the driver said sullenly. Marianne noticed that they had come to a halt on the Pont Neuf, almost directly alongside the bulge in the stonework from which she had launched herself into the Seine with the aim of bringing her life to an end.
Had Lothar always smelled of damp? She unclicked her seat belt, opened the door and got out.
“Where are you going?” Lothar asked in panic. “Marianne!”
Marianne walked over to the spot where she had sought an end to it all but had found a new beginning. She would surely have passed the place without noticing if two drivers hadn’t happened to slam their cars into each other.
Was life so accidental in its possibilities? Or did it all come down to seizing them? Now, with a clarity that pierced her heart and swept through her mind, she was certain: it only ever came down to the odd hour here or there—hours of one’s own choices, hours of freedom. A great calm came over her.
Now she understood the rage that the gallery owner had hurled at her. For Colette, the Marianne who gave herself a chance had died, capitulated. She turned to where Lothar was sitting on the backseat of the taxi, peering out at her through the window.
I don’t know why we women believe that sacrificing our desires makes us more attractive to men. What on earth are we thinking? That someone who goes without her wishes deserves to be loved more than she who follows her dreams?
“Marianne, we need to get going!”
It was then that Marianne realized what had happened to her.
It’s exactly as I thought. The more I suffered, the happier I was. The longer I went without, the stronger was my hope that Lothar would give me what I needed. I believed that if I didn’t ask for anything, made no reproaches, didn’t demand my own room or my own money, didn’t cause any arguments, the miracle would come to pass. That he would say, Oh, how much you have sacrificed! How my love for you has grown, because you sacrificed yourself for me!
The traffic was beginning to flow again.
How crazy that was. I was so proud of myself and my capacity for suffering: I wanted to be perfect at it. The more complete my uncomplaining acquiescence became, the greater his love would one day be. And my greatest abnegation—renouncing my own life—would have secured me his undying love.
She began to giggle. “Stupidly, though, there was never any deal that my suffering would be repaid with love,” she said, and curious passers-by stared at her. “You’re exactly the same!” she called after them.
Does love have to be earned through suffering?
Tears of laughter ran down her cheeks. She hoped intensely that the generations of women to come would manage better than she had, having been brought up by mothers who didn’t equate love with abnegation.
“Marianne, let’s go home!” Lothar had now got out of the car too.
She had never heard such insecurity in his voice before, such a beseeching tone, such willingness to debase himself. She wanted to call out, “Stop it! Debase yourself and you receive not love, but scorn!” No one is grateful if someone goes without for their sake: that is the cruel nature of the human race.
She walked back to the taxi, opened the trunk and lifted out her suitcase and the accordion.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” she said, slamming the trunk. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was desperate for more than she had ever wanted from Lothar.
He lunged for her arm. “Marianne, don’t leave me. I beg you, don’t go now. Marianne, I’m talking to you! If you walk out now, you don’t ever need to come home!” His voice broke as Marianne shook his hand from her arm before turning to face him one last time.
“Lothar Messmann, you’re not my home.”
With that, she picked up her cases and set out in search of a home somewhere on this earth. She wept for the love she no longer felt for Lothar, and also for the love she had refused herself.
Paris in August. Quiet days, the quietest of the year, when Parisians are in the south, and their cars with them. Empty are the streets, and the air is uncommonly pure. Paris had gone away, and the heat had gathered inside shuttered flats, kiosks and bakeries.
Marianne was sitting beside the Canal Saint-Martin, eating a brioche. The water nearby cooled the warm sheen on her skin. Four musicians were playing under the pedestrian bridge on the other side of the canal in the gentle light of approaching evening. The Arletty, a canal boat, puttered past.
It was four days since she had abandoned her husband on the Pont Neuf. She had had no idea of where she wanted to go, trusting her feet to carry her somewhere she could put down her suitcase and close a door behind her.
The envelope Geneviève had presented to her when she left had contained more than she was owed for her work at the guesthouse and Ar Mor. Madame Ecollier had paid her extra for her performance. Marianne’s worldly possessions amounted to two thousand six hundred and sixty-two euros, a borrowed suitcase holding some simple clothes and a blue dress, a Chanel lipstick, a dictionary, a tile and an accordion. She was sixty years old, without a profession, savings or jewelry, and yet she felt richer than ever before. She planned to stay in Paris until she knew what she wanted to do next—wanted to do so desperately that she couldn’t wait a single second longer.
Kerdruc did not feature in her plans.
She had come across the Pension Babette in the Marais area of town. Every one of its tiny yet bright and lovingly decorated rooms, furnished with a bed, a table, a chair and a chest of drawers, looked out onto a verdant backyard. She had watched people going about their lives in the buildings opposite, every brightly lit window showcasing a different dream: a man equipped with headphones and a baton who conducted inaudible symphonies; a woman who placed a heart in a tightly screwed jar on her bedside table and kissed it before she went to sleep; a couple who brandished potted plants as they argued, before she gave him a slap, he kissed her, and later they ate strawberries and dangled their legs out of the open window.