The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet Read Free Book Online Page B

I’d been to see her as a virgin. At any other time, to wish her husband dead would have been a childish fantasy, but in the present one my craving was almost as much of a crime as if I had actually killed him. I owed my burgeoning happiness to the War; I was also expecting it to bring it to its zenith. I hoped it would do my hatred’s work for it, in the way an anonymous person commits a crime on our behalf.
    We are crying together now; the fault lies with happiness. Marthe blames me for not preventing her from getting married. “But then would I be in this bed that I chose? She would be living with her parents; we wouldn’t be able to see each other. She would never have belonged to Jacques, but she wouldn’t belong to me either. Without him, and without any point of comparison, she might still have regrets, hope for something better. I feel no hatred for Jacques. I hate the knowledge that I owe everything to the man we are betraying. Yet I love Marthe too much to regard our happiness a crime.”
    We are crying because we are only children, with little to call our own. Take Marthe away! Since she doesn’t belong to anyone except me, it would be the same as taking me away, because we would be parted. We are already anticipating the end of the War, which will be the end of our love. We know this, and however much Marthe promises me that she will leave everything, that she will go with me, it’s not in my nature to be so rebellious and, putting myself in her place, I can’t imagine such an insane breach. Marthe tells me why she thinks she’s too old. In fifteen years’ time,life will have only just begun for me, women her age will fall in love with me. “All it will bring me is pain,” she adds. “If you leave me, I’ll die. If you stay, it will only be out of weakness, and it’ll make me suffer to see you sacrifice your happiness.”
    Despite my protests I was angry with myself for not producing any convincing counter-argument. But all Marthe asked was to be this herself, and to her my bad reasons seemed like good ones. She would reply: “Oh yes, I hadn’t thought of that. I can tell you’re not lying.” Yet faced with these fears of hers, I felt my confidence waver. So my consolations were meagre ones. I gave the impression that it was only out of politeness that I didn’t disillusion her. “No, no,” I said, “you’re crazy.” Yet sadly I was too conscious of my youth not to foresee that I would turn my back on Marthe the moment her youth wilted and mine came into bloom.
    Although I thought my love was fully formed, it was still in its early stages. It gave way at the slightest difficulty.
    So the extravagances our hearts committed that night exhausted us far more than those of the flesh. One seemed to help us relax from the other; yet in fact they both brought us to the same end. Cocks were crowing, there were more of them now. They had been crowing all night. I noticed the poetic lie here: cocks crow at sunrise. There was nothing extraordinary about that. Insomnia was unknown to someone my age. Yet Marthe noticed them too, and it surprised her so much that it must have been the first time. She didn’t understand why I held her so tight, because her surprise proved that she had never spent all night awake with Jacques.
    My hypnotic state made me believe that ours was an exceptional love. We imagined we were the first to experience particular anxieties, not realising that love is like poetry, and that all lovers, even the most unremarkable, think they are breaking new ground. So when I told Marthe (without actually believing it), but just to make her think I shared her concerns: “You’ll abandon me, you’ll find other men that you prefer,” she assured me she knew her own mind. As for me, I gradually convinced myself that I would stay with her even when her youth was gone, and in my laziness I simply trusted our immortal happiness to her physical energy.
    Sleep had stolen up on us in our