The Devil in the Flesh Read Online Free PDF Page A

had reminded me that another man would be sleeping beside her in this bedroom.
    Her fiancé’s taste was for Louis XV.
    Marthe’s poor taste was for something else; she had more of a penchant for the Japanese. So I had to battle against the pair of them. It was a question of who moved quickest. At the slightest remark from Marthe, guessing what had caught her eye, I had to point out something completely different, and which I didn’t always like, to make it seem as if I was giving in to her whims when I relinquished one piece of furniture in favour of the one she preferred.
    “And to think he wanted a pink bedroom,” she mumbled. No longer daring to admit her own likes and dislikes,she attributed them to her fiancé. I foresaw that in a few days’ time we would be mocking them together.
    Nonetheless I couldn’t quite understand her being so weak-willed. “If she doesn’t love me,” I thought, “then why does she give way to me, renounce her own preferences, as well this young man’s, for mine?” I couldn’t think of a reason. The humblest thing would have been to tell myself that Marthe loved me. Yet I was convinced the opposite was true.
    Marthe said: “At least leave him the pink fabric—leave him that!” The mere words made me feel as if I were loosening my grip. But “leave him the pink fabric” was tantamount to ceding everything. I pointed out to her how pink walls would ruin the simple furniture that “we had chosen”, and recoiling even further from such an outrage, I advised her to paint the walls of the bedroom with whitewash!
    That was the
coup de grâce
. Marthe had been so harrassed all day that she accepted without a murmur. All she said was: “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
    At the end of this exhausting day, I congratulated myself on my progress. One piece of furniture at a time, I had succeeded in transforming this love match, or rather this infatuation, into a marriage of convenience—and what a marriage! For convenience played no part in it, since each would find in the other only the advantages that a love match would offer.
    As we parted that evening, instead of trying to avoid any more of my advice, she begged me to help choose the rest of her furniture over the next few days. I promised, on condition that she gave me her word that she wouldn’t tell her husband, because ultimately the only thing that wouldmake him accept this furniture, if he loved Marthe, was if he believed that everything was her idea, her wish, for this would then be what they both wished.
    When I got home, from the look on my father’s face I thought he had already heard about my adventure. But obviously he knew nothing; how could he know?
    “Ouf! Jacques will soon get used to the bedroom,” Marthe had said. As I got into bed I kept telling myself that if she reflected on her forthcoming marriage before she went to sleep that night, then she would view it quite differently from the way she had over the past few days. For my part, whatever the outcome of this idyll of theirs, I had already taken my revenge on Jacques: and I thought about their wedding night in that stark room, ‘my’ bedroom!
    The next morning I lay in wait in the street for the postman, who would be bringing a notification of my absence. He gave it to me, I pocketed it and tossed the other letters into the letterbox at the gate. A simple procedure, although not one to employ every day.
    To my way of thinking, cutting school meant that I was in love with Marthe. But I was mistaken. Marthe was simply my excuse for playing truant. What proved it was that, having sampled the delights of freedom with Marthe, I wanted to sample it alone, and then find some followers. Freedom soon became my drug.
    It was almost the end of the academic year, and I was horrified to find that my idleness was going to go unpunished, when what I was hoping for was to be expelled, in short a drama that would bring this period to a close.
    By living life constantly