Marie Read Online Free Page B

nothing?
    Marie’s heart is overflowing with love. Marie awaits Marie.

CHAPTER FOUR
    ‘I SN’T MONSIEUR GOING to Maubeuge this month, Madame?’
    ‘Yes, Germaine, he’s going as usual.’
    ‘Shall we take the chance to sort out the wardrobes? If you tidied them, I could clean them and put in new lining paper.’
    ‘Oh no, Germaine, no. Let’s leave the wardrobes as they are …’
     
    MARIE PACKED JEAN’S SUITCASE as usual, got up early and made his picnic lunch. And as always, when the moment came to say goodbye, she cried on his shoulder because they were going to be separated for three whole days. She went downstairs with him, all the way to the taxi that was waiting outside.
    ‘Goodbye, my dear.’
    ‘Goodbye, Jean, until the day after tomorrow. I’ll come and collect you at the station.’
    As she went back into the apartment, her shoulders suddenly sagging a little, her head bent forward, it was hard to tell whether the expression on her face was one of sadness or of courage.
    She gets up, makes her way to the bedroom. When she emerges a little while later she is wearing an autumn suit. She is lightly made up and her springy hair curls around a tiny beret.
     
    PARIS IS ESPECIALLY BEAUTIFUL in the autumn. Marie loved the streets, the squares, the houses; she was alive to the poetry that the city exudes. Today she instinctively sought out places she hardly ever visited. She had no lunch and by about four o’clock, feeling hungry, she sat down at a pavement café and ordered coffee and a brioche.
    From time to time someone shouted: ‘Paris Soir, Paris Soir!’ Should she buy a newspaper? To find out that a local conflict was in danger of spreading to Europe, to endure hours of wracking fear only to discover the next morning that the London Times had declared that the international situation was more stable than it had been a few months earlier, and then to be plunged into anguish yet again because a German ship … Life goes on, slips through one’s fingers. There is fighting in the south, there are arguments in the east, there will be fighting here. People place all their hopes in Russia, and then complain that the country has lapsed into conformity … People throw themselves into fascism, men fight, thousands of unemployed workers are starving.So what? Sympathy – sympathy for others? Marie feels elevated, enhanced, by a wild egoism. She thinks: Society? I don’t care about society – only the individual interests me. To each his own life.
    She is hungry again. She orders a sandwich and bites into it with her mouth wide open, holding the bread with her whole hand. No one looks at her or bothers about her; she feels happy. In this vibrant city, with its noises all around her, she feels completely, delightfully alone. A flower seller passes and holds out a bouquet to her. Oh, not violets, please …
    She stays like this for some time. The night falls softly around her and gradually lights up, becomes striped by neon. She looks at her hands, her arms, her legs, crossed beneath her skirt. She feels young, healthy, strong; rich, tumultuous blood pounds at her temples. Like the sound of insects’ wings …
    She gets up, goes inside the cafe and asks the cashier for a token.
    ‘The telephone is at the bottom of the corridor, Mademoiselle.’
    Mademoiselle! Marie smiles as she shuts the door of the booth. W, A, G, one, seven, four, two …
     
    RETURNING TO THE PAVEMENT she paid the bill and continued to wander aimlessly along the boulevards. On this soft September evening, happiness was in the air. Instead of having supper she went into another café and drank a coffeeat the counter. All around her she could hear men talking. She had another coffee, looked at the time, tidied her hair.
    This time, when she got outside, she took her bearings. She made her way slowly: tall, straight, head held high.
    She saw the café from a long way away, at the corner of the two roads, and checked the sign. Going in, she