Dimanche and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

charitable. Ah, Nadine, you can’t think the sweet nothings you give me are enough? Do you? Well, do you?” he repeated, and she heard the sweet, voluptuous sound of his laugh through his tightly closed lips. “You must forgive me. It’s true I don’t dislike kissing you when you’re cross, when your green eyes are blazing. I can see them now. They’re smoldering, aren’t they? How about tomorrow? Do you want to meet tomorrow at the same time? What? I swear I won’t stand you up … What? You’re not free? What a joke! Tomorrow? Same place, same time. I’ve said, I swear … Tomorrow?” he said again.
    Nadine said, “Tomorrow.”
    He laughed. “There’s a good girl,” he said in English. “Good little girlie. Bye-bye.”
    NADINE RAN into the parlor. Her mother had not moved.
    “What are you doing, Mama?” she cried, and her voice, her burst of laughter, made Agnes feel bitter and troubled, almost envious. “It’s dark in here!”
    She put all the lights on. Her eyes, still wet with tears, were sparkling; a dark flush had spread over her cheeks. Humming to herself, she went up to the mirror and tidied her hair, smiling at her face, which was now alight with happiness, and at her quivering, parted lips.
    “Well, you’re happy all of a sudden,” Agnes said. She tried to laugh, but only a sad, grating little sound escaped her. She thought, “I’ve been blind! The girl’s in love! Ah, she has too much freedom, I’m too weak, that’s what worries me.” But she recognized the bitterness, the suffering in her heart. She greeted it like an old friend. “My God, I’m jealous!”
    “Who was that on the telephone? You know perfectly well that your father doesn’t like telephone calls from people we don’t know, or these mysterious meetings.”
    “I don’t understand what you mean, Mama,” Nadine said, as she looked at her mother with bright, innocent eyes that made it impossible to read the secret thoughts within them: Mother, the eternal enemy, pathetic in her old age, understanding nothing, seeing nothing, withdrawing into her shell, her only aim to stop youth from being alive! “I really don’t understand. It was only that the tennis match which should have happened on Saturday has been postponed until tomorrow. That’s all.”
    “That’s all, is it!” Agnes said, and she was struck by how dry and harsh her own voice sounded.
    She looked at Nadine. “I’m mad. It must have been my remembering the past. She’s still only a child.” For a moment she had a vision of a young girl with long black hair sitting in a desolate square in the mist and rain; she looked at her sadly and then banished her forever from her mind.
    Gently she touched Nadine’s arm.
    “Come along,” she said.
    Nadine stifled a sardonic laugh. “Will I be as … gullible, when I’m her age? And as placid? Lucky Mother,” she thought with gentle scorn. “It must be wonderful to be so naive and to have such an untroubled heart.”

Les rivages heureux
[  THOSE HAPPY SHORES  ]
    A YOUNG GIRL IN A BALL GOWN WALKED PAST: HER back was thin and golden, and her fair hair was clipped behind her ears with diamond slides. Above her long, elegant neck her face was cold, sharp, and mocking; her cheeks were flushed from dancing. Mme. Boehmer smiled with melancholy delight as she looked at her daughter and thought, yet again, “How beautiful she is … so tall … her dress is charming.”
    She moved aside to allow some couples to linger under the bunch of mistletoe decorated with blue ribbons that hung over the entrance. She sighed. She was old. New Year’s Eve, with its music, dancing, and young voices, disturbed and depressed her. Her tired, blotchy face betrayed exhaustion and her disillusion with life, tempered by grudging relief that the year had broughtneither death nor serious illness. She looked coldly at her daughter’s friends through her tortoiseshell-rimmed opera glasses. “What bad taste … all that makeup …