"Yet another victim of masculine brutality!" concluded my Uncle, sententiously; and on looking once more at the photographs he added:
"It's a pity all the same, for she is jolly good looking. And well-made, too, eh?"
"Diana personified. Neither too plump nor too thin. Moreover, as supple as a willow-wand."
"Lucky chap! You said that the marriage was fixed for…"
"July 20th."
"Next Wednesday?… And since when have you been engaged?"
"Officially since last Thursday, the very day of my return from Shanghai."
"This is bewildering. You mean to tell me that you'll have the shameful courage to… to…"
"Oh! she has advanced beyond that: she holds a Licentiate's degree in both literature and history. Above all, her reading has been most extensive; and whatever she has read she has assimilated perfectly."
"All that is very, very bad."
"Why so?"
"With a body so perfectly formed as this"- my Uncle tapped the photographs with his forefinger-"a young woman who is passionately fond of study must certainly, as Freud would have said, be suffering from a complex due to repressed sexuality… And what a complex it must be!.. The whole gamut."
"That holds forth a prospect not wholly disagreeable."
"Obviously, provided the man is skilful. But a veritable artist in love is called for and not a frantic tourist such as you are. For, believe me, my dear nephew, the danger in these young women resides in the fact that they are at one and the same time most sensual and yet rather unsociable; certainly capable of flaming like a torch-and for their whole lifetime if one knows how to awaken them; but at first hesitating, like a flame which still flickers; and this flame threatens to go out on the very first day if it is handled without due precaution. In short, I'll explain everything to you soon… Proceed with your story."
"We spent three weeks after that fashion- three weeks of delicious intimacy: intellectual and moral. I was able, wholly at my leisure, to appreciate Therese's qualities, and I found her to be a sterling young creature, — affectionate and spontaneous, yet reserved and reflective.
On the eve of my departure I confessed my love for her…"
"In the moonlight and to the sound of muted violins… and amidst kisses!"
"No, no, — nothing of the sort! I told Therese that I loved her-I asked her to become my wife. Whereupon she turned pale and declared that she felt deeply sympathetic towards me. But her final words were that both of us had need to reflect. I had great hopes of a kiss, which, despite her words, would, in a way, have pledged her. But she refused.
However, she did so in a very friendly, most simple manner, while explaining to me that she was not yet sufficiently certain as regards her future decision."
"Ah! Ah! All the same that was rather cold on her part."
"I'm giving you only a rough outline of what happened. In her voice there were those warm inflections which are hardly ever to be mistaken; and on the following day I was wholly satisfied. Early in the morning, while I was fastening my luggage, she knocked at my door.
This must have cost her a good deal. She seemed quite out of breath and spoke so quickly at first that I had difficulty in understanding her.
She begged me not to be put out by her reply of the previous nightnot to regard it as a refusal. What she feared, she went on to explain, was a hasty decision, given-perhaps-unduly, under the influence of the sorrow my departure caused her. And as she spoke of my imminent departure she made a poor little grimace after the manner of a child who is swallowing down its tears. Then, suddenly, she fell upon my shoulder and wept."
"Whereupon you dried her tears with your ardent kisses."
"I ought to have done that-eh? But she came to me so trustfully; she seemed, suddenly, to be so helpless. I did not dare to take advantage of her!"
"Bravo! Bravo!"
"You find me guilty of stupidity? Believe me, had she been a woman, or a semi-virgin… But in the case of so young a girl…"
"Why make so many excuses for yourself? Do you take me to be a brute?"
"Two days later I embarked for Shanghai… And then followed two years of exile which, this time, were indeed a heavy burden. However, we had arranged to write to each other by every mail."
"What about the Cerberus?"
"You mean her Grandmother? Well, Therese saw to that. Moreover, four months after my departure we became semi-officially engaged."
"By proxy? And I suppose the betrothal kiss was bestowed by Wireless?"
"Manifestly we had to wait until last Thursday for that…"
"I suppose that during the last week you have made up for lost time?"
Here I shrugged my shoulders, irritated by this cross-examination, and somewhat at a loss how to reply, for Therese and I were under close observation. It was on the sly and ever on the spur of the moment that we managed to kiss each other. But my Uncle understood this quite well, as indeed his words proved:
"Grandmamma Rolland shows crass stupidity. Her conduct is more than bewildering. It's positively criminal… Think of it-betrothed for a fortnight and not allowed a moment's intimacy. My dear nephew, you are going full-steam ahead towards a catastrophe."
"Come now! A catastrophe? You are exaggerating. This has happened in the case of other people."
"Don't talk to me about other people! I know you through and through.
You regard marriage seriously. You want your wife to be really your mistress. And indeed you're jolly well right there; for nothing better has yet been invented than a husband and a wife who love each other carnally-totally-without the slightest reticence, or false modesty.
Yet you are going to spoil everything."
"What would you have me do then? I'm off back to China in six weeks.
Must I wait for the eve of my departure to get married?"
"Oh! no, — anything but that… Bunks inconveniently narrow… seasickness… passengers keeping you continually under their observation!.. Very bad conditions for a honeymoon voyage, — I mean a real honeymoon between a gentleman and a lady who are capable of understanding the importance of what they are about. Here! — have a cigarette and let me explain my ideas to you. You can carry them out or not, just as you like. Anyway, my conscience will be more at its ease."
My uncle glanced at his pipe-which had gone out-as though in search of ideas; then he methodically emptied it by a regular succession of little taps on the edge of the ashtray, before remarking:
"Can you spare the time to listen to me?"
"Certainly. You can quite understand how deeply this question interests me."
"Good!.. First of all, let us try to fix the boundaries of the problem. What are we aiming at? Our object is to manufacture conjugal love. Not that spurious affection-based on financial interests, or the dictates of the fashionable world — which so often goes by that name. What we want is a total-that is to say, an intellectual and fleshly-union between two beings who make love to each other and… don't care a damn for anything else. Do you agree with me?"
"Absolutely."
"Now, in order to manufacture that sort of love, it is perfectly clear we require raw material of the finest quality, — that is to say, a woman with an infinite capacity to give forth vibrations and a man who has a passion for love."
"But if he loves too ardently he will not be content with conjugal pleasures."
"Ah! — there you make a mistake, — a great mistake, my dear nephew.
A man who plays the part of a Don Juan, without being able to fix his mind anywhere, is not a true lover. He is generally a neuropath. And if he finds excitement in novelties, it is through a necessity to restore a punctured erotism which is periodically becoming deflated."
"It may also be through eclecticism."
"Eclecticism? That of hotel-porters, who jabber several living languages, without having had the time to fathom a single one. Have you noticed that the most profound writers-a Mauriac, for instance-are men of the soil, faithful to the self-same landscape?
And people with veritable amorous temperaments are also to be measured by their fidelity. Instead of repeating the same little experiments with easy little women, they prefer the great adventure of a total love-affair."
"On condition that, in marriage, they find a partner worthy of the adventure."
"Obviously! That's a question of initial choice. I don't insist on it, since you appear to have solved the problem sufficiently well. However, I must admit it is a delicate one and hazardous as regards its solution.
But, above all, it appears to me to be badly set, because one affects to ignore its sexual side. One is floundering about in a sea of hypocrisy.
And when one comes to realize that there's a misdeal, — that the couple are decidedly ill-matched, the fiction is continued. People talk about incompatibility of temper, whereas it is clearly evident it's a question of incompatibility of the sexes. A marriage is not a satisfactory one unless sexual harmony reigns. Everything else, you see, is of secondary consideration, — at any rate in the case of those who claim to realize that erotic masterpiece, — 100 % conjugal love."
"That is to say…"
"That is to say marriage containing a big dose of fleshly love. One of those skilfully compounded cocktails containing a slight common basis of intellectual and moral aspirations, a suspicion of equallyshared social prejudices, but the whole most generously moistened with sensuality, and without forgetting a certain flavour of folly."
"Go a little further and you'll entirely suppress the slight intellectual and moral foundation."
"Not at all! On the contrary that is essential: it's an indispensable gyroscope with which to preserve the stability of households. But when the hour for desire comes and it is fanned into flame, I would see husband and wife capable of forgetting everything save their passion; I would then have them capable of obeying the wildest suggestions of their senses, — capable of banishing all reticence or shame, amidst the sole preoccupation of diversifying and renewing their voluptuousness."
"But in that case, what is the difference between a legitimate spouse and the professional vendor of love?"
"The difference? — Why, that existing between passion and venality; between inspirations of desire and actions merely learnt; between true tenderness and vulgarity! Everything which separates a body which has been wholly yours and one which others have polluted, — nay, which they may have contaminated. I delight to plunge into a mountain lake; but it is not without a feeling of repugnance that I do so in a public swimming-bath."
"By Jove! — what comparisons you do draw."
"They are literally exact. Between two young married people, really in love with each other, I can picture, without a feeling of disgust, an intimacy of lips and the flesh which, in the case of a prostitute, would sicken me."
"But there are caresses which a husband cannot accept from his wife."
"Why so? If, on her part, the tender action is spontaneous and if he cannot reproach himself either with conjugal infidelities or old-time blemishes. Clearly this latter condition is a necessity. Unless we have to do with an unspeakable cad… By the bye, what about your sojourns in the East…?"
"Nothing… I lived there like a monk-a veritable monk, and strictly observant of his rules. As to my behaviour in France, I've had only a couple of liaisons, and most sentimental ones to boot. But I've never touched a prostitute… No, on that score, I'm sure of myself."
"In that case, my boy, you can, as regards conjugal tendernesses, permit yourself everything, and accept everything."
"As an objection against that, some people might raise that minimum of deference which a husband owes his wife and which forbids him to take certain liberties."
"Ah! yes. The great objection of the father-confessors, — 'dignity as regards conjugal love.' What a sinister piece of hypocrisy! How is it that Christian moralists, — those most eloquent champions of fidelity in marriage, — make themselves the grave-diggers of that very virtue?
For that is indeed what they do when they pretend to limit the rites of conjugal love and restrict it to the brevity of a utilitarian act. They would have the nuptial bed as frigid as an operating-table. Yet they know quite well that disappointed love will seek consolation in other, warmer beds;-and that will be the doom of conjugal fidelity. You were speaking just now of the respect due to a married woman; but would it not be inflicting a grave wrong upon her if she were made merely the passive receptacle of a bi-monthly satisfaction? And what a lamentable piece of trickery is that of so many stupidly unfaithful husbands! They abandon their wives in order to purchase their pleasures from prostitutes, without suspecting that a spouse, when awakened to fleshly love, may become an incomparable mistress.
Quite as inventive as the others, but more sincere, more passionate, and healthier."
"But do you think she would always accept that part as a mistress?
That she would yield to the exigencies of your love at 100 %?"
"Clearly there are redhibitory cases, such as that of a stupid, amorphous woman; or the more delusive case of one who is very beautiful, and so smitten with her own beauty that she fears to blemish it. In all other instances, a woman's adhesion to the rites of love depend entirely on her husband."
"And what must he do to obtain it?"
"Exactly the opposite of what is usually done."
"But practically?"
"He must understand that he is not an animal in a state of rut, legally authorized to satisfy himself by raping his wife on the very night of their marriage. A day will perhaps come when the honest man, far from pluming himself on the rapidity of that rape, will make a point of honour in deferring it a little; and that day will inaugurate an era of better understanding in households. Come, my boy, can you imagine what that first night must be like to a virgin? The ridiculous nudity of a hairy man; the brutal revelation of the hugeness of his sex; the repulsive obligation of allowing herself to be ridden; the pain consequent on the act of violation; and the grotesque movements accompanying the man's desire for satisfaction. I am fully aware that many young brides accept these horrors without too great an emotion.
Some have already been instructed while others are endowed by Nature with the treasures of a stupid, bovine indifference. But what happens in the case of an intelligent, sensitive, and truly ingenuous young woman? Either she will no longer accept carnal love save as a degrading job, with the result that her husband will tire of her; or else, retiring within herself, she will meet some charming initiator, who is capable of revealing to her, delicately, the marvels of the senses, — and the husband will be deceived. In both cases there is a dissociation of the household."
"But, once more, what is one to do?"
"Simply be patient. Know how to enjoy those ineffable pleasures, — the progressive discovery of the various parts of a young woman's body, the awakening of her curiosity as regards the body of the male, and her slow initiation into the mysteries of the flesh. Moreover, these delights should be those of newly married couples, — officially, — and the fact should be patent to everyone."
"You don't mean it!"
"Certainly I do, my boy. At least if we were living in a better organized world, in which mothers were very intelligent and young men were absolutely straightforward. But in your case…
"Well, exactly, — in my case?"
"The essential thing is to compensate the brevity of the betrothal by secretly prolonging it after marriage. That would be a most beautiful, a most subtly voluptuous procedure, — the man in question being absolutely master of the virgin, but knowing how to bide his time…"
"To bide his time? To wait until when?"
"Until the hour came when that virgin, — overflowing with love for the flesh of the male, steeped in his caresses and crazy with desire, — cried out of her own accord, — 'Have me!' Then it would no longer be the lamentable discordance of a desire imposed on a feeling of disgust, but the sublime harmony of two desires, raised to the same pitch."
"And suppose the woman does not come to that decision?"
"Then the husband is either a duffer, or she is a goose. Two hypotheses to be set aside in your case."