The Woman Destroyed Read Free Page B

for sport, dress well, run their houses faultlessly, bring up their children perfectly, carry on a social life—in short, succeed on every level. And they don’t really care deeply about anything at all. They make my blood run cold.
    Philippe and Irène had left for Sardinia the day the university closed, at the beginning of June. While we were having dinner at that table where I had so often obliged Philippe to eat (come, finish up your soup: take a little more beef: get something down before going off for your lecture), we talked about their journey—a handsome wedding present from Irène’s parents, who can afford that sort of thing. She was silent most of the time, like an intelligent woman who knows how to wait for the right moment to produce an acute and rather surprising remark: from time to time she did drop a little observation, surprising—or at least surprising to me—by its stupidity or its utter ordinariness.
    We went back to the library. Philippe glanced at my desk. “Did the work go well?”
    “Pretty well. You didn’t have time to read my proofs?”
    “No; can you imagine it? I’m very sorry.”
    “You’ll read the book. I have a copy for you.” His carelessness saddened me a little, but I showed nothing. I said, “And what about you? Are you going to get back to serious work on your thesis again now?” He did not answer. He exchanged an odd kind of look with Irène. “What’s the matter? Are you going to set off on your travels again?”
    “No.” Silence again, and then he said rather crossly, “Oh, you’ll be vexed; you’ll blame me; but during this month I have come to a decision. It is altogether too much, teaching and working on a thesis at the same time. But unless I do a thesis there is no worthwhile future for me in the university. I am going to leave.”
    “What on earth are you talking about?”
    “I’m going to leave the university. I’m still young enough to take up something else.”
    “But it’s just not possible. Now that you have got this far you cannot drop it all,” I said indignantly.
    “Listen. Once upon a time being a don was a splendid career. These days I am not the only one who finds it impossible to look after my students and do any work of my own: there are too many of them.”
    “That’s quite true,” said André. “Thirty students is one student multiplied by thirty. Fifty is a mob. But surely we can find some way that will give you more time to yourself and let you finish your thesis.”
    “No,” said Irène, decisively. “Teaching and research—they really are too badly paid. I have a cousin who is achemist. At the National Research Center he was earning eight hundred francs a month. He has gone into a dye factory—he’s pulling down three thousand.”
    “It’s not only a question of money,” said Philippe.
    “Of course not. Being in the swim counts too.”
    In little guarded, restrained phrases she let us see what she thought of us. Oh, she did it tactfully—with that tact you can hear rumbling half a mile away. “Above all I don’t want to hurt you—don’t hold it against me, for that would be unfair—but still there are some things I have to say to you and if I were not holding myself in I’d say a great deal more.” André is a great scientist of course and for a woman I haven’t done badly at all. But we live cut off from the world, in laboratories and libraries. The new generation of intellectuals wants to be in immediate contact with society. With his vitality and drive, Philippe is not made for our kind of life; there are other careers in which he would show his abilities far better. “And then of course a thesis is utterly old hat,” she ended.
    Why does she sometimes utter grotesque monstrosities? Irène is not really as stupid as all that. She does exist, she does amount to something: she has wiped out the victory I won with Philippe—a victory over him and for him. A long battle and sometimes so hard for me. “I