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Christine had finally decided that she would broach point-blank the issue she had to face.
She would talk to Antoine, would demand that he leave his wife, and come and live with her. She would bring the scene that Antoine wanted to avoid at all costs about. She would exhaust last the subject he rejected by means of evasive and deliberately vague answers.
He was lying to her. He was claiming that nothing had changed in his life, but Christine was distinctly feeling that there was something different, something that threatened her.
She would assert the feelings she had for him, her presence by his side in the moments of worry or of distress, as in the moments of anger. Hadn’t she always supported him in the face of adversity or of difficulties? Hadn’t she waited patiently? Hadn’t she accepted without complaining to be sacrificed when he lacked of time?
Christine was waiting for Antoine, her spirit full of her coming speech, her head filled with the words she had looked for, clarified, weighed, chosen and finally repeated. She knew exactly what she would tell him. And, that night, precisely that night, he would choose her, he would realize, he would become aware of her love for him and of her devotion. He wouldn’t hesitate. He wouldn’t be able to hesitate.
When Antoine went into the living-room, smiling, unaware of the words that were going round, ready to pounce, in Christine’s mind, she got to kiss him just as she usually did. The outside calmness of Christine was painstakingly hiding the boiling of her soul.
She invited Antoine to sit down: she wanted to talk to him. She felt that he suddenly got on his toes.
Antoine sat down though, probably sensing that he wouldn’t be able to find any loop-hole. He didn’t feel at ease.
He waited silently that Christine speak first.
She breathed deeply before she began.
First she asked Antoine how were his wife and his son. Then, after he had answered, she held on the question of knowing what was the current state of his relationship with Judith.
Antoine was aware that he wouldn’t be able to avoid the conversation that was foreshadowing, that he would have to answer. He would have to tell the truth to Christine and he was afraid of her reaction. Would she be able to accept to hear him tell her about the reality that he had managed to conceal till then? Wasn’t she going to reject him, to leave him?
He ended up explaining to her that Judith had finally decided to get milder, to become more pleasant, more bearable. He omitted all that aspect of the subject that regarded the intimate relations that had started again with his wife. He confusedly felt that Christine was convinced that she had the exclusivity of this part of his life.
He added that he thought that his wife had quite simply been scared that he end up taking a mistress and deciding to leave her.
Christine seized the opportunity: didn’t Antoine have the intention to leave his wife?
There was no way. He didn’t want to wreck a marriage that had given its fruits. He had a home and a son, in one word a family that he didn’t want to hurt, nor to abandon. He couldn’t envisage doing it even less so given that his relations with his wife were just getting better and that it precisely made him more happy.
Christine alluded to the arguments, not that distant yet, of the couple. All that, Antoine had told her. He told her to what degree his wife could be cruel and unfair. She had thought that he would finally leave her.
Antoine didn’t ever even think about it. He had wanted a normal life, fairly busy. He had looked for what his wife had finally refused to give him. That was all.
Christine kept quiet for a while, shaken by the truthfulness of Antoine’s answer. She realized that she wouldn’t get anything from him that evening, that he wouldn’t head to the direction she had wanted him to take with her. She didn’t want either to leave him or to provoke anything irreversible.
Antoine, seeing her distress, got closer to her. He sat by her side on the couch. He put his arm around Christine’s shoulders, and, pulling her against him, he asked her what was happening to her.
Christine didn’t know. She was feeling worried, vulnerable. She was frightened that he finally leave her for his wife and that he go back to her.
Antoine found her silly. He didn’t understand how she came to imagine that he be able to get to such an extreme. He had never thought deserting her. She was his oasis of calm, his refuge. And, that, he didn’t want to lose.
Christine finally let herself go against Antoine. She returned his embrace, relieved.
The conversation hadn’t taken the twist she had wanted. She had thought she was stronger than that, that she would be able to decree, to order, to demand. In the end, she had just begged a few caresses. She caught herself contenting herself with some reassuring words and the absolute certainty he just gave her that he wouldn’t desert her; he didn’t even think of it. She had become, month after month, too important for him, for him to seriously think to live without her.
At bottom, she had to let time work it out in her place. It was surely by her side. Little by little, she would make him grow more attached to her, she would become irreplaceable, more important than everybody, than his wife, than his son. She would become more vital than the air he breathed.
And she would give him this son he was talking about, he was wanting.
And, one day, he would realize that he also had a home where she was, a sweeter, a sounder, a more loving family.
Then he would leave Judith and Arthur for her, Christine, and for their child.
In reality, imperceptibly, Christine had just taken an even greater part in Antoine’s double life.
Without knowing it, she was entering deeper in the underground world, the muffled and secret world, of the mistresses, of the ones who are always here, but who are also always concealed.
She didn’t become aware that she had just mortgaged what should have been the most beautiful years of her life.
Posted in Literature
Christine wasn’t suffering much due to the improvement of the couple relationship. Quite on the contrary, Antoine was more often relaxed, more receptive. He didn’t have as many mood swings as before. It seemed that he had got back to a real state of well-being, and he visited her as often as he used to.
At first, she appreciated the difference in Antoine’s behavior. He also was less authoritarian. She put all that down to the success of his business and to her own constant and faithful presence by his side.
He wasn’t talking anymore about his arguments that used to be so frequent with his wife though. Consequently she began to worry.
Wasn’t that peace concealing a reconciliation of the couple which she would have to bear the cost of at the end?
She decided she would ask Antoine to discover where the things were exactly.
An evening, while they were having dinner together, she approached the subject as discreetly as she could. She didn’t want that Antoine suspect her anguish. She had to avoid to alarm him to make sure she would obtain a reliable answer. But, and that is the peculiarity of people who keep much quiet, her anxiety spreading through the words she pronounced, the agressivity she had intended to hide showed in her question.
Antoine bewared. He remained evasive about what was happening in his couple, assuring her that nothing had changed, and that the things remained at the same point with his wife.
Christine didn’t believe a word of it. She didn’t insist though, and swallowed the other questions she had been about to ask.
Of course, it had the effect to nurture her anxiety that considerably increased during the following days. She saw herself neglected, abandoned in aid of Judith who, as for her, prevailed in spite of the fact that she put Antoine through the wringer.
Christine, at the same time, had had to reassure, to support and to love a man who, even if he didn’t say much about it, was indubitably hurt by the vicissitudes of his married life.
All of Christine’s projects were dissolving. The dreams of a future life with Antoine she had entertained became devoid of hope, bereft of the slightest chance to come true in a near, or even more remote, future.
That wasn’t fair. She had to be sure, to make sure that Antoine wasn’t to leave her then and go back to an orderly and exclusive life as a couple, a life in which she wouldn’t have her place, a life she wouldn’t either have.
Posted in Literature
One night, as Arthur was already in bed, to the the great astonishment of Antoine who had ended up, in desperation, and because he had regained more control over his own freedom, to show a certain detachment with regard to Judith, she offered herself to him.
Had she worried because of the kind of disregard, which she couldn’t uncover the meaning of, that Antoine recently displayed with her? Did she have remorse or did she simply wanted her husband again?
Antoine didn’t ask himself so many questions. He just seized the advantage as it came.
In fact, Judith, after she had entered into a ratio of power that, at the end, had become totally inextricable, and that had revealed itself to be indubitably a dead-end, simply had become aware that Antoine, by dint of being inexorably rejected, could get tired and end up to extremities she didn’t wish to see materialized: she became frightened that Antoine finally take a mistress and think about leaving her.
Judith didn’t want that her husband slip from her grasp for good. She perfectly knew that he needed to maintain a sexuality as high as his vitality. He tired her, but she had finally understood that it was time for her to accept to share a bed that she had deserted for too long.
In the morning, Antoine left the house to go to work, a little lighter, a little happier than he used to.
Judith, during the night, had shown herself pleasant, almost infatuated. She gave to him unrestrainedly what he hadn’t got from her for a time that had seemed to him like forever.
As is was one of the days which evening was kept for Christine, he joined her after an ordinary busy day at work.
His happiness, his spirit surprised Christine. Antoine was always dynamic, lively; he had never seemed happy to her though.
Antoine didn’t tell her about the reason of the change in his mood. He knew that women could show themselves possessive and didn’t want to take the risk to bring about a scene of which he knew he wouldn’t bear neither the content nor the kind of fierceness.
At bottom, since Antoine had reason to congratulate himself for the way his business was improving, that would be far enough to explain his found happiness. By the bye, Christine didn’t look any further than the explanation that Antoine gave her as she had told him about her awareness. That evening, she also simply showed herself happier than she usually was.
Judith had obviously decided to make a fresh start in her relationship with her husband.
During the days that followed their reconciliation, that she had initiated, she began to show herself more accommodating, more pleasant, and, above all, she had been back into the conjugal bed.
He felt relieved. The arguments with his wife had sapped his will even if he always had held his course.
He didn’t really feel totally confident though. At all time, he was expecting that Judith, whose unpredictable mood he knew well, without warning, get back to the hostilities, refuse again to share the conjugal bed.
In the meanwhile, he was taking things as he used to: just as they came, without really trying to understand the real causes of Judith’s change of attitude. By the bye, he didn’t have much time during his days, to lend himself to that type of exercise in thinking. He was a bit more happy and that was enough for him. When the tension would start again he would bear and wait till the next respite. He then was convinced that Judith didn’t want either that they split.
Posted in Literature
Antoine had finally recovered a certain balance. Several months had gone. He had structured himself and had succeeded in facing his various duties.
He worked a little less because he was efficiently helped by the employee he had chosen.
Antoine had kept the word given to Judith during the intense crisis upon which he had thought he had irremediably lost her. Though he intended, as his wife demanded that he be always more present by her side, forcing him to sacrifice some of his professional commitments, that she accept to get back to a normal life as a couple. Judith persisted with her refusal. It wasn’t in question anymore to have whatever physical contact with her husband. She said such contacts made her suffer because they had become unbearable. Actually the only explanation to that refusal was that she purely and simply rejected Antoine himself. In one word, she didn’t love him anymore. He couldn’t understand what was the cause of that rejection, and that added to the mortification of his self-esteem.
Judith had had consequently to ease off on her grasp little by little. She finally preferred not to spend too much time with Antoine who, as for him, was going on claiming that she fulfill what he finally had called, in desperation, her marital duties. It had been of no use though, and she had preferred to let Antoine be freer in the organisation of his time, better than to have to sustain more often his repeated assaults. She reproached him less for his latenesses, excused more easily his absences.
Judith had also finally, out of patience and arguments, feeling that she else would have to accept to go back to the marriage bed, renounced to one of the two evenings Antoine had had to promise to save for her and their son. The professional duties he had to fulfill, just as he had told her one day, had the advantage of making him forget his sad condition of rejected husband, and for her, the advantage of letting her some respite by distancing Antoine who was constantly complaining about the frustration she imposed on him.
In fact, he gave those evenings to Christine who, as for her, was always ready to see him without objecting, and even with a certain pleasure. That distracted him from the frustrating everyday life of his couple.
In the end, he could meet Christine at their apartment at least twice a week.
Christine then lived in a pleasantly adorned, roomy and light two-bedroom apartment.
Antoine and she had no real life as a couple. She sometimes regretted it, but faithful to her own habits, she waited patiently. She thought that Antoine would finally leave his wife to come and live with her. He was obviously in love with her, and he also talked about having a child together when she would have finished her studies and when he would have acquired, at the same time, a sufficient financial solidity.
Christine wasn’t taking into account that Antoine attached importance to his marriage. For him, this union made sense, even if it wasn’t perfectly fitting in with the idea he had made of it. By getting married, he had taken a life-long commitment, once and for all. He wasn’t imagining a single second that he would be able to live without his wife and his son. At bottom, he had that taste that many men have for a certain type of sadomasochist relationships. Antoine and Judith’s marriage was then no more than a pure ratio of power, that had been established for several years yet by then. There was not much left of their bygone complicity. Strangely, Antoine had finally got used to their new style of relation, and was even enjoying it in a way.
Judith was his wife, and that meant something for him. In fact, he wasn’t really analyzing the situation, he was simply taking it as it came.
Antoine, whatever Christine imagine, was very far from thinking to leave Judith. He was actually counting on finally obtaining from her that she start again a worthy of the name sexual life.
He was in love with Christine, of course. He often spent with her nice moments, going up sometimes to the point of a senses elation that he had experimented only at the very beginning of his relationship with Judith, before she even became his wife. Maybe marriage had that cooling down effect over the whole womankind. Finally, best live exactly the way he was living, with a woman who was evolving just like any other would have, and a charming mistress whom he was infallibly protecting from being tempted to set in the comfort of a situation that would have made her equally unbearable in the long run.
So was Antoine’s state of mind.
That wasn’t perturbing at all the illusions that Christine was maintaining .
Her logic was very different from Antoine’s one. She was banking on the love she had for him, on the feelings they were sharing. She thought that he would compare, and that, at that game, Judith would certainly lose. What man could have bear for long a bitter and despotic spouse, a wife, as beautiful as she might be, changed into an inflexible cold fish, when he could have at his exclusive disposal the given heart and body of a soul that was entirely his?
Christine was waiting that he make his mind, and making the most of every moment she spent with him. She didn’t say anything , didn’t ask either. As certainly, as surely as he had made of her his mistress, as he was then sharing with her a part of his life, he would also make of her his wife.
In fact, little by little, a deep misunderstanding was setting in between Christine and Antoine. That was even more serious maybe, even more poisoning for the future of their relation because it was taking root in the silence, in the darkness of the field of the unsaid.
Posted in Literature
Antoine could finally have more liberty from the month of November. In October, he had hired a salesman whom he had had to train before he could let him work with part of his customers.
Among a dozen applicants or so, he had selected a twenty years old young man who admittedly was a beginner, but had a sound schooling. It looked as though he had made the good choice. After fifteen days, the new recruit was already starting to deal with some appointments by himself. He had rapidly got to know Antoine’s firm structure, its products and its methods.
Therefore, Antoine, after a month, was feeling confident enough in his new employee to let him stand by his own feet.
Christine and Antoine had seldom seen each other during the two months that followed August. Antoine had tried to make time about once a week to visit Christine. But, it hadn’t always been possible. They even had spent fifteen days without having been able to share even a single moment alone together. They hardly had bumped into each other when Christine had come to work at Antoine’s firm, and for what’s left, they scarcely had talked on the phone some times.
Christine had finished to arrange their apartment over the course of October. She had started again her lessons at the university by mid-october. As she had been very busy during the two months that lasted Antoine’s unavailability, she hadn’t thought much to her relative solitude and consequently hadn’t suffered much. Of course, after Antoine and she had spent a whole month alone together, the contrast was big. But she had told to herself in order to find some comfort that things would be getting better as soon as Antoine would be properly assisted in his work.
She was mistaken, because the reality, that Christine incidentally wasn’t unaware of, was that Antoine had not only one life, but in fact two. It would have required, for both their benefit, that he also have at his disposal forty-eight hours days. Needless to say that it wasn’t the case. Inevitably this circumstance would have consequences that Christine, before anyone else, would have to suffer from.
Indeed, Antoine’s wife, whose patience was far less big than Christine’s one, was beginning to give worrying signs of exasperation before her husband’s frequent absences. He was getting up early, coming back late at night. So to speak, she almost didn’t see him except on Saturday or Sunday that Antoine immutably exclusively reserved to his family. Arthur, their son, was demanding even more often his father as he was more frequently absent.
Judith had ended up disappearing for two days long, with Arthur. Antoine hadn’t been able to locate them. He had called his parents-in-law, their friends, in vain. Judith remained nowhere to be found until as he was back home an evening he discovered that she had returned.
After a heated argument, Antoine had had to promise that he would reserve for her and their son two evenings each week. He had done this sacrifice with a heavy heart, aware that he was irremediably reducing the weekly time he had thought he would be able to spend with Christine.
Christine, as for her, was still at a low level of demand. She was busying herself and waiting patiently.
She had seen Benjamin again at the university. They had gone on just as they were used to, since the previous year, to sit side by side in the lecture-hall. One month spent without seeing Christine had allowed Benjamin to reflect or rather to the wound received to heal. Their relation, a little starchy at the beginning, had gone on just as if there had been no changes in their relation. Their friends were surprised by that constancy when they told them what had happened.
Christine had been relieved by Benjamin’s attitude and by his manifest forgiveness.
At heart, her life was rather pleasant, between her lessons at the university, her apartment and her job in Antoine’s firm.
Just a single cloud still remained on the horizon: the rarity of Antoine’s visit and her solitude due to it.
Christine had decided to remain faithful though. She still was in love with Antoine. She perfectly knew that he wouldn’t think about leaving his wife yet. He had shown, from the very beginning of his relation with Christine, a great attachment to his family, by the by, without concealing her his discord with his wife.
Christine had been disappointed by Antoine because of the promise he had made to Judith, after she had disappeared with their son for two days. As for her, she had had, in the meantime, to try and reassure Antoine, to be the long-suffering and finally helpless witness of his anxiety. She couldn’t understand that he give way to such patent a blackmail. She told him about her disappointment. He had shown himself sorry and contrite. But, what else could have been done though?
Christine didn’t tell the words that had burnt her lips.
Posted in Literature
From the very beginning of the month of September, Christine, whose classes at the university hadn’t started again yet, began to look for an apartment to rent in the city where Antoine’s firm premises were located.
They wanted a place a little larger than the flat Christine inhabited in a small city of the neighborhood.
She viewed several two-bedroom apartments before she finally found the one she was almost sure Antoine would like as well.
He came and see it with her the afternoon of the following day, having succeeded in getting away one hour between two appointments.
As Christine had thought, the apartment with its wide bay windows, its large balcony and its bright rooms, exactly pleased Antoine who made a decision at once.
They agreed with the real-estate agent who escorted them that Christine would sign the lease agreement at the beginning of the following week. That is what she did.
Then, Christine managed to move her things and furniture. Antoine, who was, by that end of September, particularly busy during the week, was immutably spending the Saturday and the Sunday as a family. He hadn’t been able either, by finding an excuse to give to his wife, to go and give a hand to Christine, not even one time, every evening of that same week having been busy anyway with real professional appointments.
Christine moved all that she could from her place with a rental car. She hired a mover for the furniture. Once she had arranged all of it into the rooms, and tidied her things up, the apartment, that was a lot larger than the one she lived in before, looked empty.
Net curtains were still missing as well to dress the bay windows.
Through the week that Christine spent arranging the apartment, Antoine didn’t have time enough even just to pop in.
Christine, as for her, faithful to her habits, spent one day at Antoine’s firm.
The secretary had regained her place.
Christine wasn’t any more impressed by her. Now that she had occupied her place for the whole month when she took her vacation, that she had taken her own habits in the firm, and, above all, that she had come in further in Antoine’s life, she didn’t feel any more intimidated under her eyes, by the bye always cheerful, of the secretary.
Christine let her know her new address. Whether the secretary guessed the real reason of that move that, would you believe, was bringing Christine closer to Antoine, she didn’t let it slip, in any way, contrary to her habit.
She noted down, without any further comment, without one of those amused looks that she so often had had to the great trouble of Christine, her new address.
Christine, of course, was far surer of herself. The commitments that Antoine had taken with her, the evolution of her own feelings during the month they had spent alone, had strengthened her in a position that wasn’t that confortable only a few weeks before.
She saw Antoine only a few minutes that day. He had literally been drowning in work since the beginning of September.
He had sorry eyes when he told her, as they kept themselves to themselves for a while to have a talk in Christine’s study, that he wouldn’t have a single minute to give to her before the following week. He spoke again about hiring a salesperson to help him in the field. He didn’t have much time for himself those last weeks, and he was seriously thinking about having a full-time member from October.
He indeed looked tired, commented Christine while giving him a kiss on the cheek. He should find at least a while during the week to switch off a little.
He promised to keep for himself an evening with her, by pretending at his home he had some outdoors appointment.
That is how, the very following day, a Thursday evening, he came at last to discover the apartment the way Christine had begun to arrange it. He found it somehow empty, without much soul. As he told Christine about these thoughts, she answered him that the soul of a place was growing up with the time, with the habit to live in it, with the story that was taking its place in it little by little, and the memories that would finally people it. That was a fact, of course, but it was just as true that were missing there some pieces of furniture and curtains for the windows. At bottom, they agreed with one another: Christine had done exactly the same comment to herself.
Antoine promised Christine to give her the money that was necessary to some purchases that seemed good to do to her, to fill the emptiness that they both considered had to be. He wanted a cozy decor, relaxing, in which he would be able to rest easily after the tensions due to his days at work.
As Christine was starting university again only by the month of October, she would have time to deal with that. She also had to meet Benjamin who was probably already back from the United States. She hadn’t called him yet. As for him, he only by then possessed a phone number that had no subscriber any more as she couldn’t have it transferred on its new line that was in another city than the one in which she lived before. Christine’s number had changed and if he already had tried to call her, he was probably asking himself many questions.
Christine and Antoine only had time enough to have dinner and to lie down for a while on the bed that Christine had moved from her previous apartment.
The day after, Christine came to Antoine’s firm premises. He had left for her, in her study, an envelope that contained the necessary money for the furniture and arrangement purchases she had to do.
In the morning, she had finally called Benjamin whom with she made an appointment at his home, at the very beginning of the afternoon of that same day.
Their interview didn’t last long. Christine had considered lengthily the way she was going to present the situation to him.
She discovered that Benjamin had more or less already guessed what she was coming to announce him. He told her he had felt a change in her since the start of her internship at Antoine’s firm. He had seen her trouble, then had observed the evolution upon her of the seduction Antoine had obviously exerted over her from the very beginning.
In fact, Benjamin confessed to her being disappointed because she didn’t say anything to him, because she made a secret of her new condition. He didn’t refuse to remain friends of course but he would need time to forget what he considered after all like kind of a treason. The reasons Christine had alluded to to explain her initial mutism hadn’t convinced him. He had found them bad, selfish. At deep, she just had wanted to protect herself knowing perfectly well that he was the one whom she would finally sacrifice.
Benjamin wasn’t really wrong. Christine din’t admit it in front of him, but as she told him good bye, she was feeling kind of a dizzy spell deep within herself. She finally headed to the stores where she would, as it was not that late, do some purchases reserved for her new nest.
Posted in Literature
It’s only two days before the end of the month of August that Antoine finally resolved to talk to Christine.
They were at her home, sat on the couch of the small living room.
They had just have dinner. Christine, once she had had cleared the table, had joined Antoine who had switched on the television to keep himself busy while waiting for her.
She cuddled up to Antoine whispering in his ear that time was flying when spent by his side, that she was sad to reach the end of their solitude, the return of his wife and his son, and the one, more distant, of Benjamin.
Antoine had seized the opportunity. Indeed they both had to think about the way they were going on together in the future. Of course, Judith was coming back and regaining her place by his side, but he didn’t want to sacrifice Christine for all that. He wanted to go on seeing her as often as possible, which could mean every single day.
Christine wasn’t expecting Antoine to talk to her that way anymore. They had made the most of every evening of the whole month they had spent together without he broach the question of the future of their relation a single time. As he had waited so long, she had ended up not thinking anymore about what their relation would become and simply lived with him from day to day.
She let him talk without saying anything at first. She was attentive and open.
Obviously Antoine had a plan in his mind.
He offered Christine to move and live in a flat that they could rent in the city where the premises of his firm where located. That way, as soon as he had a moment, and even if she wasn’t in, he would be able to come and take refuge in a place where he knew he would always find some peace.
Christine agreed. She liked that idea a lot; she just couldn’t imagine anymore to spend two days without seeing Antoine.
This is precisely when and how began to root and to be constructed a relationship that could as well have been without any future.
Antoine, though he thought he would not have to come to it, didn’t absolutely rule out the idea of speaking to Christine about Benjamin, and ask her openly the question that burnt his lips. He didn’t feel very at ease: when it came down to it, what allowed him, after all, to ask her to leave her boyfriend when himself wasn’t thinking at all to separate from his wife? Actually, in principle, to have a one-way requirement with regard to Christine didn’t really make him uncomfortable. That is more the idea that Christine might reproach him with a selfishness of which, confusedly, he was aware, and refuse quite simply to put an end to her affair with Benjamin, that made him hesitate to broach the subject directly. He wanted at all costs to avoid to find himself f in a dead-end , pushed to begin with Christine a ratio of power that would finally spoil their relationship, or even possibly lead it to its end. He had such knowledge of that type of traps that he wouldn’t have taken the risk to be caught in them again. He also knew well the inflexibility he was able to show, not to hesitate to face a possible refusal from Christine. At the same time, he wanted to be sure.
Christine, just as he had hoped, spared him the difficulty he would have had to express his request. She talked about Benjamin on her own initiative. She just couldn’t imagine anymore, while their relationship was twisting the way it did, to go on her relationship with Benjamin on the same note.
She explained to Antoine that she had been hesitating till then because she wasn’t sure he really wanted to commit himself with her.
Of course, she hadn’t anything to reproach Benjamin with, so she hadn’t actually seen why she would have broken up with him without being able to allude to a genuine excuse that is, in fact, a new meeting.
She wanted to keep friends with Benjamin and therefore spare his self-esteem. Just as well would he understand that she leave him for another man, just as well could he had been hurt and got away from her forever if she had left him, at the very beginning of her relationship with Antoine, invoking a nondescript story.
In truth, she just hadn’t wanted to take the risk of finding herself emotionally and sexually alone.
Posted in Literature
The month of August flied away. Christine and Antoine spent their days working and their nights together. Apart from the call Antoine gave to his wife each day, he and Christine were in full possession of their whole liberty.
Benjamin had gone for a vacation. He was visiting an uncle who had settled in the United States of America for a ten years or so. He was keeping there till the end of September. Christine who couldn’t help feeling guilt when thinking about him, experienced a certain relief due to his remoteness. She kept aware that the situation was perfectly momentary. Benjamin would come back, and she would have to make a decision. She was thinking that in one month time, she would have set herself sufficiently, that in September she would be ready to take drastic action to fix a situation that she was beginning to perceive as totally unbearable. She didn’t like to conceal, nor did she like to lie.
Since the very beginning of their affair, she had been in love with Antoine. She just had lacked to be sure that Antoine wanted to commit himself with her in a lasting and firm way. He just had a single word to say. By the by, she felt he was about to do it. That was surely by then only a matter of days.
That was when she would find the strength and the energy to talk to Benjamin, sparing him at the same time: Christine didn’t want at all to lose a friend for who she had a deep affection.
While waiting for Antoine to decide himself, Christine was enjoying his presence and their solitude. She was simply living on cloud nine. Putting aside the some issues they could have to do with at work, everything single thing seemed perfect to her.
They almost didn’t let one another out of their sight during the whole day. Antoine who always had been very attentive to Christine, pleasant and comrade, had become tender and loving, almost in love. However, Christine felt he was still holding himself back from committing himself further in their relation.
She was clever enough to understand that his reservations were not at all against her, that their only reason was the sensitive situation in which Antoine was finding himself. Up to then, he only had relationships with no future. That way she was saving her own amour-propre that she knew was vulnerable and prompt in being wounded. Consequently her relations with Antoine were gentle and confident.
The leisure of the life they led together was far beyond the hopes she had entertained since Antoine had offered her to spend the month of August with him. Except at the weekends when he reached his family on the Côte d’Azur, Antoine was spending all his spare time with Isabelle. They had all their nights together, some times at her place, the other times at his place. When they were going to Antoine’s, they did their utmost not to be noticed by any tactless neighbor. To that end, they arrived late, and one after the other.
Hoping not to have to finally do it, Antoine had postponed the time to speak to Christine about the aggravation that the fact she had a boyfriend caused to him. He then began to see things from another point of view. He was going to approach the question some other way. Talking to Christine about his desire and will to install her lastingly in his life would be enough: she then would take things in hand off his own bat, she would inevitably understand, without further explanation from his part, that he wasn’t the type to share a woman for very long. That was getting him closer to all the other men: he was unable to accept from the part of a woman what he wouldn’t have admitted that anybody, even less coming from a representative of the so-called weaker sex, criticize with him.
Posted in Literature
Antoine had asked Christine to replace his secretary who was taking her vacation during the month of August.
For his part, he had decided, to the great disillusion of his wife who was spending the month at the second home of her parents with their son, to only join them at the ends of the weeks.
Issues having pilled up, the current business needing him to be present, he had thought it would be wiser to work during his usual month of vacation, not to risk putting the still fragile balance of his firm in danger.
Up to then, he had been obliged to do almost everything by himself. He had planned to hire a salesperson to help him, but because of the disappointing results of his firm during the last six months, he had had to postpone the project till September. Consequently, he had no other choice than depriving himself of vacation.
Christine accepted the offer of Antoine at once. She had planned to go to her parents’ in Rouen and to follow them to Le Touquet where they rented a house even summer. However the idea of finding herself alone with Antoine for a whole month exerted over her more seduction than the possibility of a tedious family vacation.
Therefore, she didn’t resist the temptation.
Christine, who was a young woman who owned a romantic soul, and above all, who hadn’t been really scalded in her sentimental life before, delighted herself in imagining that Antoine had actually invented that as a stratagem to spend a month with her.
Nothing was more erroneous. Antoine had a very practical point of view. He was just yielding to the circumstances. He simply wanted the make a situation he didn’t wanted nor chose the more pleasant possible.
He always had enjoyed the month that he was invariably spending, each year, with his parents-in-law. He got on well with his father-in-law. Every day they went sailing on the small sailboat Antoine rented for the summer. As Judith and his mother were seasick as soon as they saw a sail, they never were accompanying them. That far Arthur had been too young to come with them during their long trips on the high seas. Antoine had been thrilled to the thought he would, for the first time that year, now that his son was old enough, take him with him on the sailboat.
Therefore, he was disappointed to be obliged to content himself with spending with them only the weekends on the Côte d’Azur.
He didn’t allow it to be seen, making the best of that bad job. To tell the truth, he wouldn’t be that all at sea since Isabelle had accepted to work with him for the whole month during which he would be alone, without his secretary, his wife, nor his son.
Christine was pleasant, efficient and she was likely to become quite a skillful lover.
Little by little, she was making her own place in his life, without saying nothing nor asking anything. With her, he never felt threatened.
As for him, he was receiving things just as they were coming, without really planning the future, without constructing yet real projects of life where Christine would play a genuine part. The thought of establishing her lastingly in his life sometimes crossed his mind, but he preferred to wait a little longer before talking to her.
In fact, one thing he didn’t tell Christine about was still holding him back: the fact that she had a boyfriend. Indeed he distinctly felt when she talked to him about him that she wouldn’t have been torn for long if he had asked her to choose. Precisely, that was what he didn’t want to do. He preferred that she come to desert Benjamin little by little, without him, Antoine, be clearly hold responsible for it.
Moreover he wasn’t very sure of himself yet.
Nevertheless, he had in mind to make of Christine his scheduled mistress. He was tired of the affairs he contented himself with till then to fill in the unsurmountable failure of his wife.
But he didn’t want, nor could he, share his thought with Christine. Therefore, he had neatly tidied up in someplace of his brain while waiting for the idea to mull over.
Antoine wasn’t the type who weighed himself down with useless thoughts, or still unsolved problems.
By the by, that was without thinking to anything in particular that he got into his firm premisses.
Christine was sitting behind his secretary’s desk in such way as to have the phone, the fax and the computer at hand. Moreover, this place had the incontestable advantage to be just opposite the front door: this way, Christine would see Antoine as soon as he arrived every morning.
After having smiled at her and wished her a good morning, Antoine moved forward and kissed Christine on the mouth.
Posted in Literature
As planned, Christine and Antoine had lunch in a restaurant.
Antoine was then perfectly relaxed, calm and happy.
They were chatting about this and that, sat down at a table of a sidewalk sitting area of a restaurant located in the neighborhood of Antoine’s firm.
Christine was over the moon. She had never had lunch alone together with Antoine, nor during her internship at his studies, neither since she went there once a week to work.
In spite of the new shift their relationship seemed to take, so far Antoine had remained silent about his real intents regarding Christine. He treated her kindly and friendly. It didn’t look like love. They didn’t exchange the gestures lovers usually exchange. Antoine wouldn’t hold Christine’s hands, he wouldn’t kiss her mouth, nor would he hold her by the waist. He was obviously feeling more released when they were absolutely alone, although he always was reserved in his words.
Of course, this reserve could be explained by the drive to being discreet due to the fact that, Antoine being married, he didn’t want the truth of his infidelity to reach his wife’s ears.
Therefore, Christine understood his reserves, his desire that the true nature of their relationship be not revealed in their entourage. She didn’t feel hurt because of it, even less so given that their relation precisely seemed to evolve and to go a way that allowed her to dream of a future in which she would have her own place in Antoine’s life. That was all she wanted, even though deep inside herself, she wanted more. She expected that would come the time when he ask her to be his without restrictions.
Strangely, she doubted not that he would come to the point that, in the secret and the twilight of her discreet female soul, she was already waiting for him.
Posted in Literature