Free La Chamade by Françoise Sagan Page B

and my brother was stricken with polio. He is still in a wheelchair. My mother was seized with a devouring passion for him, of course. She never leaves him. She's rather forgotten me, I think.'
    She paused. When she came to Paris, she managed, not without difficulty, to send some money to her mother every month. For the past two years, Charles had sent it, without ever mentioning the fact.
    'My parents hated each other,' said Antoine. 'They refused to divorce only so that I might have a home. I would have infinitely preferred to have two, I assure you.'
    He smiled, reached across the table and squeezed Lucile's hand.
    'Do you realise? We have the whole evening, the whole night.'
    'We'll go slowly back to Paris with the car open. You'll drive very slowly because it's cold. I'll light your cigarettes so you won't have to take your hands off the wheel.'
    'We'll go slowly because you want me to. We'll go dancing. Then we'll get into bed and tomorrow morning you'll know at last whether I take tea or coffee and how much sugar.'
    'Dancing? We'll run into everyone we know.'
    'So what?' asked Antoine dryly. 'You don't imagine that I'm going to spend my life hiding, do you?'
    She looked down, without answering.
    'You'll have to make a decision,' said Antoine gently. 'But not tonight, don't worry.'
    She raised her head, so obviously relieved that he could not help laughing.
    'I already know that the slightest delay enchants you. You only live in the present don't you?'
    She did not reply. She was perfectly happy with him, perfectly natural, he made her feel like laughing, talking, making love, he gave her everything and it frightened her a little.
    She woke up early the next day, and opened her bewildered eyes to the untidy room, and the long arm sprinkled with blond hairs that prevented her from stirring. She shut her eyes immediately, rolled over, smiled. She was next to Antoine, she knew what was meant by the expression 'night of love'. They had gone dancing and had met nobody. Afterward, they had returned to his room and talked, made love, smoked, talked, made love until broad daylight found them in bed, drunk with words and action, in that deep, exhausted peace that follows excesses. They had thought a little of dying that night, in their violence, and sleep had come to them like a marvellous raft on which they had climbed and stretched out before fainting, still holding hands as a last complicity. She looked at Antoine's averted profile, his neck, the stubble on his cheeks, the blue shadows under his eyes and it was inconceivable to her that she could have ever awakened with anyone else. She was glad to find him so dreamy and nonchalant in the daytime, so violent and precise at night. As though love roused in him a carefree pagan whose one inexorable law was pleasure.
    He moved his head, opened his eyes and gave her the babyish, half-hesitant, half-surprised glance that men have in the morning. He recognised her and smiled. His head, warm and heavy with sleep weighed on Lucile's shoulder, she looked amusedly at his big feet sticking out of the tangle of sheets at the other end of the bed. He sighed and muttered something plaintively.
    It's incredible, your eyes are an even paler yellow in the morning,' she said. 'They look like beer.'
    'How very poetical you are,' he replied.
    He sat up quickly, caught Lucile's face and turned it to the light.
    'Yours are almost blue.'
    'No, they're grey. Greyish-green.'
    'Braggart.'
    They sat in bed, face to face, naked. He still held her face in his hand, a searching expression, and they both smiled. His shoulders were very broad and bony, she freed herself and laid her cheek against his body. She listened to his heart beating wildly, as wildly as her own.
    'Your heart is thumping,' she said. 'Are you tired?'
    'No,' he answered, 'it's beating la chamade.'
    'What is a chamade , exactly?'
    'You'll have to look it up in the dictionary,' he said. 'I haven't time to explain now.'
    And he stretched