Free The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet Page B

during these long days, which to an observer would have seemed empty, as when I was watching my novice’s heart like a social climber does his table manners.
    Whenever I didn’t sleep at Marthe’s, which was almost every day, we would go for a walk along the Marne after dinner until eleven o’clock. I would untie my father’s boat. Marthe would row; lying down, I laid my head in her lap. I got in her way. And then suddenly one of the oars would bump against me, and remind me that this excursion wouldn’t last our whole life.
    Love likes to share its bliss. A mistress who is naturally cold will become tender, kiss our neck, dream up a million coquetries if we are busy writing a letter. I never felt a greater desire to kiss Marthe than when she was preoccupied with something other than me; never any greater yearning to touch her hair, muss it up, than when she was arranging it. When we were in the boat, I would throw myself at her, smother her with kisses so that she would drop the oars, and then the boat would drift, hostage to the rushes, the white and yellow water lilies. In this she saw evidence of ungovernable passion, whereas what drove me more than anything, and violently, was the compulsion to distract her. We would moor the boat behind some clumps of long grass. The fear of being seen or capsizing made our frolics infinitely more exquisite.
    So I never complained about the landlord’s hostility, which made being at Marthe’s house so awkward for me.
    My so-called obsession with possessing Marthe in a way that Jacques had never been able to, of kissing a tiny place on her body after having made her promise that no other lips but mine would ever touch it, was nothing butlasciviousness. Did I admit this to myself? Every love has its youth, its maturity, its old age. Had I already reached the final stage, where love no longer satisfied me unless accompanied by certain refinements? For if my sensual pleasure depended on habit, it was whetted by the multitude of mere nothings, those minor adjustments that are imposed on habit. Is it not first of all by increasing the dose, which soon becomes lethal, that an addict achieves rapture, but also in the rhythm that he devises, whether by varying the times or making use of trickery to throw his body off the scent.
    I was so fond of the left bank of the Marne that I started going for walks along the other side, which was very different, so I could gaze at the one I loved. The right bank isn’t as soft, and is used by market gardeners, farmers, while mine is for idlers. We would tie the boat to a tree and lie in the middle of a cornfield. The crop would quiver in the evening breeze. In its hiding place our selfishness ignored the damage it was doing, sacrificed the corn to our love’s well-being in the same way we were sacrificing Jacques.

XVIII
    A VAGUE SCENT OF IMPERMANENCE STIRRED my senses. The fact of having savoured more savage pleasures, akin to the loveless ones that come with our first experience of a woman, dulled the effect of the others.
    I had already learnt to value nights spent in chastity and freedom, the comfortable feeling of being alone in a bed with cool fresh sheets. I used discretion as an excuse for not sleeping at Marthe’s house now. She was impressed by my strength of character. But I also dreaded that irritation provoked by a particular angelic note in womens’ voices when they wake up, and who, being born actresses, seem to appear from another world with each new morning.
    I reproached myself for being critical, for my dissimulations, spent whole days wondering if I loved Marthe more or less than before. My love made everything more complex. Just as I misinterpreted the things that Marthe said, thinking I was giving them deeper meaning, I analysed her silences. Perhaps I’d always been mistaken; a certain impact, which can’t be described, tells us we’ve hit the nail on the head. My joys, my fears were more intense. Lying beside her, a