She Came to Stay. Simone Beauvoir de

‘You are so anxious to be happy.’ She looked away into space. ‘But I wasn’t born resigned.’

      Françoise was cut to the quick. Surely she couldn’t contemptuously push aside the acceptance of this happiness that seemed to her so clearly to be asserting itself. Right or wrong, she no longer regarded Xavière’s words as outbursts: they held a complete set of values that ran counter to hers. However much she refused to acknowledge this fact, its existence was awkward.

      ‘This life of ours is no resignation,’ she said sharply. ‘We love Paris, and these streets, and these cafés.’

      ‘How can anyone love sordid places, and hideous things, and all these wretched people?’ Xavière’s voice emphasized her epithets with disgust.

      ‘The point is that the whole world interests us,’ said Françoise. ‘You happen to be a little aesthete. You want unadulterated beauty; but that’s a very narrow point of view.’

      ‘Am I supposed to be interested in that saucer because it presumes to exist?’ asked Xavière, and she looked at the saucer with annoyance. ‘It’s quite enough that it’s there.’ With intentional naïveté she added: ‘I should have thought that when one is an artist, it is just because one likes beautiful things.’

      ‘That depends on what you call beautiful things,’ said Pierre.

      Xavière stared at him.

      ‘Heavens! you’re listening,’ she said, wide-eyed but gently. ‘I thought you were lost in deep thought.’

      ‘I’m paying close attention.’

      ‘You’re not in a very good mood,’ said Xavière, still smiling.

      ‘I’m in an excellent mood,’ said Pierre. ‘I think we’re spending a most delightful afternoon. We’re about to start off for the private view, and when we’re through with that, we’ll have just enough time to eat a sandwich. That works out perfectly.’

      ‘You think it’s all my fault,’ said Xavière, showing more of her teeth.

      ‘I certainly don’t think it’s mine,’ said Pierre.

      It was simply for the purpose of behaving disagreeably towards Xavière that he had insisted on meeting her again as soon as possible. ‘He might have given me a thought,’ Françoise reflected with bitterness; she was beginning to find the situation intolerable.

      ‘That’s true. When for once in a while you’ve got some free time,’ said Xavière, whose grin became more perceptible, ‘what a tragedy it is, if a little of it is wasted!’

      This reproach surprised Françoise. Had she once more misread Xavière? Only four days had passed since Friday and at the theatre, yesterday evening, Pierre had greeted Xavière most amiably. She would already have to be very fond of him to feel that she had been neglected.

      Xavière turned to Françoise.

      ‘I imagined the life of writers and artists to be something quite different,’ she said in a sophisticated tone. ‘I had no idea it was regulated like that – by the ring of a bell.’

      ‘You would have preferred them to wander about in the storm with their hair streaming in the wind?’ said Françoise, who felt herself grow utterly fatuous under Pierre’s mocking look.

      ‘No. Baudelaire didn’t let his hair stream in the wind,’ said Xavière. She continued more naturally: ‘What it amounts to is that, except for him and Rimbaud, artists are just like civil servants.’

      ‘Because we do a little work regularly every day?’ Françoise asked.

      Xavière pouted coyly.

      ‘And then you count the number of hours you sleep, you eat two meals a day, you pay visits, and you never go for a walk one without the other. It couldn’t possibly be otherwise …’

      ‘But do you consider that unbearable?’ asked Françoise with a forced smile. This was not a flattering picture of themselves which Xavière was showing them.

      ‘It seems queer to sit down every day at one’s desk and write line after line of sentences,’ said Xavière. ‘I admit that people should write, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘There’s something voluptuous about words. But only when the spirit moves you.’

      ‘It’s possible to have a desire for a piece of work as a whole,’ said Françoise. She felt a little inclined to justify herself in Xavière’s eyes.

      ‘I admire the exalted level of your conversation,’ said Pierre. His malicious smile was aimed at Françoise as well as at Xavière, and Françoise was disconcerted; was he able to judge her objectively, like a stranger, she who could never bring herself to keep the slightest thing from him? This was disloyalty.

      Xavière never batted an eyelash. ‘It becomes home-work,’ she said and she laughed indulgently. ‘But then that’s the way you always do things, you turn everything into a duty.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ said Françoise. ‘I can assure you that I don’t feel myself so particularly handicapped.’