The Devil in the Flesh Read Free Page B

I would have every reason to dislike her, and thus wouldn’t need to reproach myself for being unfair, I hoped she would have a common way of speaking. But in that respect she disappointed me.
    As for the father, he seemed a decent fellow, a former non-commissioned officer worshipped by his men. But where was Marthe? I shuddered at the prospect of a walk with no other company except her parents. She was coming on the next train, “in a quarter-of-an-hour,” Madame Grangier told us, “because she couldn’t get ready in time. Her brother is with her.”
    As the train drew in, Marthe was standing on the steps of the carriage. “Wait till the train stops,” called her mother … Such recklessness enchanted me.
    Her dress, her hat, both very simple, were signs of the scant regard she had for other people’s opinions. She was holding hands with a young boy who looked about eleven. It was her brother, a pale child with the hair of an albino, and whose every movement spoke of illness.
    On the path Marthe and I walked in front. My father followed behind, between the Grangiers.
    Meanwhile my brothers yawned at their puny new friend, who wasn’t allowed to run around.
    When I complimented Marthe on her water-colours, she replied modestly that they were only studies. Shedidn’t attach any importance to them. She would show me better ones, “stylized” flowers. Since it was the first time we had met, I felt it best not to tell her that I thought flowers of that kind were absurd.
    She couldn’t see me properly from beneath her hat. But I was studying her.
    “You don’t look much like your mother,” I said.
    It was a compliment.
    “People sometimes tell me that, but when you come to our house, I’ll show you photographs of Mama when she was young; I look a lot like her.”
    I was grieved at this reply, and prayed to God I would never see her when she got to her mother’s age.
    Keen to dispel my distress at her painful reply, and not realising that it could only have been painful to me, because luckily Marthe didn’t see her mother in the same way as I did, I told her:
    “You’re wrong to wear your hair like that, having it loose would suit you better.”
    I was petrified, never having said anything like that to a woman before. And I remembered what my own hair was like.
    “You could always ask Mama” (as if she needed to explain herself!). “My hair doesn’t usually look as bad as this, but I was late, and I was afraid of missing the next train. Besides, I wasn’t intending to take my hat off.”
    “What kind of girl is this,” I wondered, “who allows some boy to criticise the way she does her hair?”
    I tried to guess her literary tastes; I was pleased that she knew Baudelaire and Verlaine, delighted at her way of liking Baudelaire, which wasn’t the same as mine, however. I thought I detected rebellion. Her parents had eventuallyaccepted her likes and dislikes. Marthe resented them for this, taking it as only a token sign of affection. In his letters, her fiancé told her about what he was reading, and while he recommended certain books to her, he forbade others. He had forbidden her to read
Les Fleurs du mal
. Unpleasantly surprised to find out that she was engaged, I rejoiced that she had disobeyed a soldier who was enough of an idiot to be frightened of Baudelaire. I was glad to get the feeling that he sometimes shocked Marthe. After this first unpleasant surprise, his narrow-mindedness delighted me, even more so because I had feared that if he also appreciated
Les Fleurs du mal
then their future marital apartment might have been like the one in
La Mort des amants
. But then I asked myself what business this was of mine.
    Her fiancé had also forbidden her to go to drawing classes. I offered to take her—me, who never went to one—adding that I often went there. But, afraid I would be caught out in this lie, I urged her not to mention it to my father. He didn’t know that I cut gym lessons so I