Bonjour Tristesse Read Online Free PDF Page B

laying my head on their knees and laughing. For was I not happy? Anne was all right, I had no serious fault to find with her. She would guide me, relieve me of responsibility, and be at hand whenever I might need her. She would make both my father and me into paragons of virtue.
    My father got up to fetch a bottle of champagne. I felt sickened. He was happy, which was the chief thing, but I had so often seen him happy on account of a woman.
    "I was rather frightened of you," said Anne.
    "Why?" I asked. Her words had given me the impression that a veto from me could have prevented their marriage.
    "I was afraid of your being frightened of me," she said laughing.
    I began to laugh too, because actually I was a little scared of her. She wanted me to understand that she knew it, and that it was unnecessary.
    "Does the marriage of two old people like ourselves seem ridiculous to you?"
    "You're not old," I said emphatically, as my father came dancing back with a bottle in his hand.
    He sat down next to Anne and put his arm round her shoulders. She moved nearer to him and I looked away in embarrassment. She was no doubt marrying him for just that; for his laughter, for the firm reassurance of his arm, for his vitality, his warmth. At forty there could be the fear of solitude, or perhaps a last upsurge of the senses. ... I had never thought of Anne as a woman, but as an entity. I had seen her as a self-assured, elegant, and clever person, but never weak or sensual. I quite understood that my father felt proud, the self-satisfied, indifferent Anne Larsen was going to marry him. Did he love her, and if so, was he capable of loving her for long? Was there any difference between this new feeling and the affection he had shown Elsa? The sunwas making my head spin, and I shut my eyes. We were all three on the terrace, full of reserves, of secret fears, and of happiness.
    Elsa did not come back just then. A week flew by, seven happy, agreeable days, the only ones.
    We mode elaborate plans for furnishing our home, and discussed time-tables which my father and I took pleasure in cutting as fine as possible with the blind obstinacy of those who have never had any use for them. Did we ever believe in them for one moment? Did my father really think it possible to have lunch every day at the same place at 12.50 sharp, to have dinner at home, and not to go out afterwards? However, he gaily prepared to inter Bohemianism, and began to preach order, and to extol the joys of an elegant, organised bourgeois existence. No doubt for him, as well as for myself, all these plans were merely castles in the air.
    How well I remember that week I Anne was relaxed, confident, and very sweet; my father loved her. I saw them coming down in the mornings, leaning on each other, laughing gaily, with shadows under their eyes, and I swear that I should have liked nothing better than that their happiness should last all their lives. In the evening we often drank our aperitif sitting on some café terrace by the sea. Everywhere we went we were taken for a happy, normal family, and I, who was used to going out alone with my father and seeing the knowing smiles, and malicious or pitying glances, was delighted to play a rôle more suitable to my age. They were to be married on our return to Paris.
    Poor Cyril had witnessed the transformation in our midst with a certain amazement, but he was comforted by the thought that this time it would be legalised. We went out sailing together and kissed when we felt inclined, but sometimes during our embraces I thought of Anne's face as I saw it in the mornings, with its softened contours. I recalled the happy nonchalance, the languid grace that love imparted to her movements, and I envied her. One can grow tired of kissing, and no doubt if Cyril had not been so fond of me I would have become his mistress that week.
    At six o'clock, on our return from the islands, Cyril would pull the boat onto the sand. We would go up to the house