Climates by André Maurois Read Free Book Online Page A

order that my father demanded of his employees, both at Gandumas and on the rue de Valois. When I saw those three ill-lit rooms, the partly torn greenboxes, and the septuagenarian draftsman, I realized that my aunt’s informer had been right to describe Monsieur Malet as an architect with no work. Odile’s father was talkative, easygoing; he received me with a cordiality that was rather too perky, talked to me about Florence and Odile in affectionate terms full of emotion, then showed me the drawings for some villas he “hoped” to build in Biarritz.
    “What I should really like to build is a large modern hotel, in Basque style. I submitted a project for Hendaye, but I didn’t secure the commission.”
    As I listened to him, I pictured the impression he would make on my family with trepidation and discomfort.
    Madame Malet invited me to dinner the following day. When I arrived at eight o’clock, I found Odile alone with her brothers. Monsieur Malet was in his office reading; Madame Malet had not yet come home. The two boys, Jean and Marcel, looked like Odile and yet I instantly knew we would never be close friends. They tried to be amicable, brotherly, but several times during the course of the evening I caught them exchanging glances and smirks that clearly meant, “He’s not much fun …” Madame Malet came home at half past eight and made noapology. When Monsieur Malet heard her, he appeared like a good little boy, book in hand, and just as we were sitting down, the chambermaid showed in a young American, a friend of the children’s who had not been invited but was greeted with great cries of joy. In all this disorder, Odile still looked like an indulgent goddess. She sat beside me, smiling at her brothers’ quips and calming them down when she felt I was overwhelmed. She seemed as perfect as she had in Florence, but it pained me, although I could not properly define my pain, to see her surrounded by this family. Beneath the booming triumphal march of my love, I could hear a muted Marcenat motif.
    My parents paid a visit to the Malets and, surrounded by the generous effusiveness of Odile’s parents, maintained an air of polite rebuke. Luckily, my father was very susceptible to women’s beauty although he never talked of it (and in that I knew I was similar to this stranger): he was won over by Odile from the first.
    “I don’t think you’re right,” he said as we left, “but I can understand you.”
    “She’s certainly pretty,” my mother said. “She’s unusual; she says such funny things; she’ll have to change.”
    In Odile’s view there was another meeting more important than our families’: the meeting between her best friend, Marie-Thérèse (whom she called Misa), and myself. I remember feeling intimidated; I could tell that Misa’s opinion meant a great deal to Odile. In the event I rather liked her. Although she did not have Odile’s beauty, she was very graceful and had regular features. Next to Odile she looked a little hardy, but side by side, their faces formed a pleasing contrast. I soon grew accustomed to seeing them as a single image and thinking of Misa as Odile’s sister. And yet there was an innate refinement in Odile that made her very different from Misa, although by birth they were from the same social circles. During our engagement I took them to a concert every Sunday, and I noticed how much more attentively Odile listened than Misa. Eyes closed, Odile would let the music flow through her, she seemed happy and forgot about the world. Misa’s eyes were inquisitive as she looked around, recognized people, opened the program, read it, and irritated me with her agitation. But she was a pleasant friend, always cheerful, always satisfied, and I was grateful to her for telling Odile, who then told me, that she thought I was charming.
    We spent our honeymoon in England and Scotland. I cannot recall a happier time than those two months alone together. We stopped in small hotels