To Kitty’s resolutely professional eye, Adolphe was mainly interesting for its conjunction of eighteenth-century classicism and Romantic melancholy. If she concentrated on this aspect of the story, she could overlook its terribly enfeebling message: that a man gets tired of a woman if she sacrifices everything for him, that such a woman will eventually die of her failure, and that the man will be poisoned by remorse for the rest of his life. She decided to ask her students to analyse the use of words, and to dedicate the last half-hour of her class to a wider investigation of Romantic accidie. She feared that her students might become sentimental on this point and was mainly interested to see if they had any views on it that she had not encountered before.
These students were three in number. ‘Larter, Mills, and Fairchild,’ said Professor Redmile. ‘Larter an obvious First. Mills, as you know, older than the other two. I understand that he is on a year’s sabbatical from some teacher training college. Miss Fairchild quite promising but obviously not up to the standard of the others. Miss Fairchild will need a little cosseting, Miss Maule. I know I can count on you.’
They were indeed a very disparate group, hardly a group at all. John Larter, the obvious First, was a disruptive influence but a very necessary one. Painfully thin, excited and excitable, unshaven, anxious to please, chain smoking, irritating, and, Kitty recognized soberly, after she had known him some weeks, a kind, honest, and potentially brilliant scholar, the rarest thing in the world. He would settle down if given the right scholarships, the right fellowships; his filthy jeans and sweater, which did not suit him, for his whole demeanour was too anxious, too adult, too wary, would eventually give way to something more conservative and presentable; he would have his wispy hair properly barbered; he might even learn to withstand the blandishments of the elitist life he would be called upon to live, and thus maintain the extraordinary purity of his intellect. For at the moment there was no mystification in him. That would come later, with public success. If life tripped him up, on the other hand, failed to provide him with those essential opportunities, he would go all the way down, ruin his health, drink too much, make do sadly with substitutes. ‘What did you do in the vacation?’ she had once asked him. ‘Well, I was going to Grenoble to do my Stendhal stuff,’ he had answered. ‘But I met someone on the train and got off when he did. You know how it is.’ He had flashed her a smile that was both malicious and wistful. She feared for him, but recognized that she could do nothing to help him. She was a restraining voice when his words threatened to spin out of control or run out of sense; she restated the position for him, enabling him to start again after a wrong direction too energetically pursued. At the same time, she marvelled at the profundity of his thought, the generosity of his ideas. Theirs was in fact an ideal alliance. He made her feel like a teacher. She did not make him feel like a student.
Philip Mills had disconcertingly grey hair, which made Kitty unsure of her role. He was a teacher himself and some years older than she was, kind, polite, cautious, bifocalled. She wondered if he were satisfied with his year off, or whether he found them all disappointing. Not Larter, surely? For Mr Mills was a good foil to Larter, argued with him, was irritated by what he called his free association, was given to unseemly exasperation, which he had surely never been able to express so freely. ‘What do you mean, tragic? How can a word be tragic in itself? It can only have tragic implications.’ ‘It can have a tragic sound,’ Larter would cry and immediately produce a flood-tide of tragic-sounding words. ‘You have lost the point again,’ Mills would answer testily. ‘You always go past it. Your analyst has got a lot to answer for.’ At this stage Kitty would intervene; sometimes it would take her a couple of minutes to impose her will on their perfectly valid disagreement and restore a sense of unity to her class. She enjoyed these episodes, for she possessed a sense of fairness, and was happy to see them chattering amicably a few minutes later, or when they bundled their books together at the end of the seminar and went off for a cup of tea. She was on excellent terms with both of them.
Not so with the troubling Miss Fairchild, who had never been observed to open her mouth unless invited to do so. When Miss Fairchild read an essay, it ran quite sensibly for about seven minutes, ending with a complete sentence and a full stop. Then Miss Fairchild would lift her limpid eyes to Kitty and say, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t have time to write any more.’ There would be no answer to this. For she was so extremely beautiful that it seemed a concession for her to have written anything at all. Even Larter was half hypnotized by her. She had long pre-Raphaelite tendrils of beige hair with which she played throughout the seminar, drawing them back briskly behind her neck as if in preparation for some sort of announcement, or winding a lock round and round her fingers and across her lips, her immense eyelids lowered in obviously meaningful reminiscence. Her skin would retain its even golden character throughout the extremes of heat and cold experienced in Kitty’s little attic room; the greenish eyes would watch unblinkingly as Larter and Mills went for each other. She usually wore a cotton skirt and a dark blue jersey, borrowed from a brother, Kitty supposed, for its sleeves nearly covered her hands. Her full and rather low bosom occupied most of the front of it.
By mutual and unspoken consent, the two men left her out of their discussions. But Kitty, who was obscurely unsettled by her speechless presence, made sure, like a good hostess, that her questions were regularly addressed to Miss Fairchild. When thus addressed, Miss Fairchild would clear her throat, uncross her legs or shift her position in a sensuous fashion unsuited to the occasion. She would sometimes answer quite reasonably but was clever enough to let Larter run away with her argument, which he did without even noticing he had been activated. At such moments Miss Fairchild would give a faint smile, push her hair behind her head, and then let it fall forward, shielding her face. Kitty was rather frightened of her. She recognized that Miss Fairchild was unteachable, and this in itself was frightening. But more than that; Miss Fairchild was unteachable because she felt she knew enough already.
‘Will you describe to me,’ said Kitty calmly, ‘some of the tristes équivoques of which Adolphe accuses himself?’
‘In fact,’ said Larter, ‘there is no equivocation there at all.’ He took a massive drag on his eighth cigarette. ‘Adolphe decides to seduce this woman, then grows tired of her, and wants to return to a more suitable way of life. She hangs on. His weakness in the face of her suffering is not equivocation. It is cowardice.’
‘But Adolphe himself calls this suffering something else. And he is in a state of conflict. Hence, équivoques. Look at the words and trust them more. After all, this is Constant’s story, not yours. And a novel is not simply a confession, you know. It is about the author’s choice of words.’
Mills pondered. ‘He never uses the word amour.’
‘Yes, he does,’ said Kitty, ‘but he is talking about love as a phenomenon, not about his love for this particular woman. I am sorry to hammer this point but you must take notice of how the words are handled, in which context they are used. They will tell you everything. For her part, Ellénore considers Adolphe misérable. What do you make of that? Miss Fairchild?’
Miss Fairchild raised her startling eyelids and smiled, to herself rather than at the question, as Kitty feared. ‘Well,’ she said, very slowly, ‘this woman is a nuisance. She’s old and she’s foreign. She’s ruining his career. Obviously, she’s being unfair.’
Kitty, trying to control her annoyance, said, gently, ‘That’s not quite what I meant. None of these words is used accidentally. The word misérable is used because there is a great deal of shame involved. How do we know this?’
‘The preface,’ said Larter excitedly.
‘All right, the preface. Some think that this is the most important part of the book, although it was added some years later. Ten, to be precise. I think it might be useful if we were to translate the preface at this stage. Into the exact equivalent; no flourishes, please. Mr Mills?’
Mr Mills donned his bifocals. ‘ “I wanted to depict the malady suffered by even the most arid hearts on account of the sufferings they cause, and the illusion that leads them to suppose that they –” ’
‘ “That these sufferings”,’ murmured Kitty.
‘ “That these sufferings are lighter or more superficial than they really are. From a distance, the image of the sorrow one causes appears vague and confused, like a cloud easy to pierce; one is encouraged by the approbation of an entirely artificial society, which replaces principles with rules and emotions with …” ’
He stopped.
‘Convenances,’ said Kitty. ‘That’s a difficult one, isn’t it? Yet that is perhaps the most crucial word in the paragraph.’
‘Conventions?’ supplied Larter.
‘I think so. We’ll see. Go on, Philip.’ She always called them by their Christian names when she got carried away by the argument. She felt a closeness with them, then. Even Miss Fairchild was watching Mills, although her hands were now hidden in the sleeves of her pullover.
‘ “… which replaces principles with rules and emotions with conventions, and which condemns scandal as tiresome, not as immoral, because it …” ’
‘Society,’ said Kitty.
‘ “… because society is quite accommodating towards vice when there is no scandal attached; one feels …” ’
‘ “It is felt …” ’
‘ “It is felt that attachments which have been made without reflection can be broken without any harm being done”.’
‘Remember that sentence,’ said Kitty. ‘That is what the novel is all about.’
Mr Mills, quite unmoved by what he was reading, looked over the top of his glasses and asked her if she meant him to go on. Kitty indicated that she did.
‘ “But when one sees the anguish that results from these broken attachments, the painful astonishment of a deceived soul, that defiance …” ’
‘Mistrust,’ murmured Kitty.
‘ “That mistrust that succeeds perfect confidence …” ’
‘ “That mistrust that succeeds perfect trust”,’ said Larter, in wonder, with an expression of pain.
At least one of them is getting there, thought Kitty, and aloud she said, ‘Take that sentence again, please, Philip.’
‘ “But when one sees the anguish that results from these broken attachments, the painful astonishment of a deceived soul, that mistrust that succeeds perfect trust, and which, forced to direct itself against one being out of the whole world, spreads to that whole world, that esteem driven back on itself and not capable of being re-absorbed, one feels, then, that there is something sacred in the heart that suffers because it loves; one discovers how deep are the roots of the affection one thought to inspire without sharing it; and if one overcomes what one calls weakness, it is by destroying in oneself all that was generous, by tearing up all that was faithful, by sacrificing all that was noble and good. One stands up after such a victory, which is applauded by friends and acquaintances, having condemned to death a portion of one’s soul, tilted at sympathy, abused weakness, and outraged morality by taking it as a pretext for harshness; and one survives one’s better nature, ashamed or perverted by this sad success. This was the picture that I wanted to paint in Adolphe”.’
They were all silent for a moment. Even through the clumsy translation they had felt the writer’s sadness. And his skill. Kitty drew a deep breath.
‘Now, Jane,’ she said. ‘Do you still feel that you can dismiss Ellénore’s use of the word misérable? It doesn’t mean miserable, remember. It means wretched. Wretched as in poor. One of the early meanings of misère is poverty.’
Miss Fairchild smiled. Kitty decided to take this for assent. She cleared her throat.
‘We are in fact talking about a particular state of bankruptcy,’ she said. ‘And although the novel is written completely without imagery, in the driest traditions of the eighteenth-century moral tale, it lacks the buoyancy and optimism of the eighteenth century. Has it acquired anything that would have been unthinkable in the eighteenth century?’
‘Despair,’ said Larter.
‘All right,’ said Kitty. ‘What sort of despair?’
Larter took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and for fifteen minutes gave them an almost seamless account of the Romantic dilemma. This, according to Larter, but in fact according to Chateaubriand, was due to the collapse of moral standards in the Revolution, to the repudiation of the supernatural, to the deconsecration of the churches and the exiling of the priests, to the attempt to live according to the humanitarian rules of the eighteenth century, to live without piety and belief and consolation. But God, having been lost, was difficult to find again. Romantic man, man without God, had to behave existentially, and experienced isolation.
‘Yes,’ said Kitty. ‘Romantic man has lost his original unity and uncovered a new complication. Even in the eighteenth century they knew that this might happen. Mme du Deffand asked Voltaire what he proposed to put in the place of the old beliefs, you remember. She sensed trouble ahead.’
Mr Mills then objected that Existentialism could not be projected backwards into the nineteenth century.
‘Yes, it can,’ said Larter. ‘Existentialism is a Romantic phenomenon.’
He then gave them ten minutes on Existentialism.
‘You may be right, in general,’ said Kitty. ‘But we have not yet reached the concept of the Absurd. The hero of Adolphe experiences pain through his conscience. He does not explain it as a general rule. What we have here is a moment of supreme morality. I would refer you once again to the words.’ She looked down at her text. ‘Imprudences. Règles sévères. Faiblesse. Douleur profonde. I am, at the moment, picking these up at random.’ Under the table she glanced at her watch. ‘For next week, will you please bring a full list of such words. I think we shall arrive at a better understanding of the Romantic dilemma once we have them in front of us. That will do for now.’
She closed the book in front of her, feeling pleasantly exercised. Such afternoons, once the initial nervousness had passed, gave her no trouble. She felt that she had left her onerous daily self behind, and with it all problems of nationality, religion, identity, her place in the world, what to cook for dinner, all thoughts of eventual loneliness and illness and death. She passed, at such times, into a sphere of pure meaning, derived from words written nearly two hundred years ago, and those very words, used for her enlightenment, did in fact enlighten her.
Mr Mills took off his bifocals and put them back in their case. Larter stretched and yawned. The air was blue with smoke and stale concentration. Miss Fairchild released her hands and closed a notebook in which she had not made a single note. She never did.
Kitty Maule, her manner and gesture precise, wished them good afternoon and waited until they were out of earshot. With their departure came silence, a friendless silence. I am not old enough for this way of life, she said to herself, and wondered why this had occurred to her. She would have liked to join them, to go on arguing, to have walked to the bus-stop with Mills and Larter. Ideally, she would have liked to travel home with someone, with Maurice, to be precise. She did not like going home. She did not like waiting on the station platform with the lights blurring in front of her tired eyes, her mouth stale with the taste of tea from the station buffet. She never managed to read on the train.
On this particular day, at that dwindling hour between five and six, she was tired enough to allow herself to feel quite seriously down-hearted. She took a taxi at the other end with a sense of defeat, not of earned relaxation. As she put her key in the front door she wished there were someone inside the house. At the same time, she had to be pretty deft to avoid her neighbour Caroline, the divorcee. Caroline, always available for a chat, thought that others should be too. Caroline’s door would open seductively, and she would say, ‘Oh, Kitty, I’m so depressed. Do come and talk to me.’ ‘Just hang on a minute, Caroline,’ Kitty would say. ‘I must dump these books. I’ll ring you later.’
Once inside her own flat, she put on the lights and telephoned her grandmother to see if she were all right. Papa answered the telephone as usual; she could hear the television in the background, blasts of sycophantic laughter, gales of applause. They always had it on too loud. And Vadim never told her exactly how things were. Everything was always for the best in the best of all possible worlds; Louise had had a good day, rain was forecast for tomorrow, so take an umbrella, they had had marvellous onion soup for lunch, and it was so easy to make – would Thérèse like him to come over and make some for her? The work of an instant, no more. No? Of course Louise was, well, a little tired, perhaps, but they were not so young, my darling, you must expect this. What was she going to eat, he asked, and waited for the answer, enthralled. Kitty, who intended to have something on toast, told him that she would have a chop and some salad. Never neglect the vegetables, said Vadim passionately. And the cheese. Not too much coffee. She agreed. ‘Can I say goodnight to Maman Louise?’ asked Kitty, to cut him short. There was a pause, the dropped telephone picking up the sounds more clearly, then a creaking of footsteps, heavy steps, then a heavy breathing. Well, ma fille, said Louise, a good day? A good day, said Kitty. You wore the blue? Yes, agreed Kitty, she had worn the blue. Hang it up immediately, advised Louise. With pleats one can never be too careful. And tissue paper in the shoes, of course. Always, Kitty said, don’t worry, I always do as you say. Louise let a pause elapse, pregnant with disbelief. Then, goodnight, my pigeon. Sleep well. Until tomorrow.
When Kitty replaced the telephone the silence was complete. It was such a very quiet street, she thought. She had always disliked those stories which begin, ‘In the town of H——, in the province of O——’. They seemed to shut her out. The action of Adolphe takes place ‘dans la petite ville de D——’. Such a refusal to give the story its usual complement of detail turns it into a sort of parable, makes one search for universal meanings which may not be there. She thought of her grandparents. Their love did not console her, was in fact a burden. She could never eat or wear enough to conciliate them with her way of life. Nor could she bring them any news that they would have wished to hear. She could not tell them what she had been doing, for in their eyes she had been doing nothing. The moral dilemmas of Adolphe would meet with total incomprehension, and she had the grace to spare them any self-important account of her success that afternoon, for it had been a success, she told herself. One always knew. Her landscape was as bare of imagery as Adolphe itself. She could not even tell Maurice, for his world was all of a piece; success in all one did was assumed without affectation. Besides, in his world, everyone was active and united. His mother sometimes came to his lectures, and was in the habit of driving off by herself to stay with friends in Scotland or Italy. People with houses.
It was a question of conditioning, thought Kitty Maule, as she hung up her skirt. I function well in one sphere only, but all the others must be thought through, every day. Perhaps I will graft myself on to something native here, make a unity somehow. I can learn. I can understand. I can even criticize. What I cannot do is reconcile. I must work on that.
Into her dreams that night came the unbidden words, ‘Mais quand on voit l’angoisse qui résulte de ces liens brisés …’, but she could not remember the rest.