Annette left Sylvie's apartment intending never to enter it again. She was weeping. She was burning with shame and rage. These two passionate natures could not cease to love each other without almost hating each other.
Impossible for Annette to remain under the same roof with her! If she had had the means she would have moved the next day. Happily for her, she had to yield to practical necessities: to give notice, to look for another apartment. In her first fury she would have preferred to place her furniture in storage and camp out in a hotel. But this was not the moment to squander her money. She had very little laid aside; what she earned was spent as she went along; even when she had no recourse to her sister's aid, the feeling that she could appeal to her in case of need gave her a security that spared her any too keen anxieties over the future. When she came to reckon up what she must have in order to live, she was obliged to recognize, to her mortification, that if she were thrown upon her own resources her actual work would not suffice to support her. Living with her sister and taking some of their meals together lightened her expenses. The child's clothes were given him by Sylvie, and Annette paid only for the material of her own dresses. And this was not to mention the things she borrowed or those which, while they belonged to one, served for two, the small gifts, the Sunday excursions, the little extra pleasures that brightened the daily monotony. And then the credit which her sister enjoyed in the neighborhood gave Annette the benefit of a certain latitude in paying her bills. Now she would have to count upon paying cash for everything. The beginning would be hard. The moving, the deposit, the expenses of settling. And the great question, who was going to look after the child? A contradictory question: for she had to earn money for the child, and in order to earn it she had to leave home, and who would take care of him? Annette had to admit that she would never have surmounted these difficulties if they had come earlier, when Marc was very young. How did other women manage? Annette was sorry for the unhappy souls, and she felt humiliated.
Place the child in a boarding-school? He was old enough to go to school now. But she was unwilling to shut him up in one of those menageries. What she had heard about those old-time institutions (things have been somewhat improved since then), what she instinctively surmised about this physical and moral promiscuity, had led her to regard it as a crime to put one's child into them. She wanted to believe that the boy would be unhappy there. Who could say? Perhaps he would have been very glad to get away from her. But what mother can believe that she is a burden to her child? She was not even willing to leave him at one of these schools for his meals. She told herself that this was because of Marc's delicate health; he needed special food; she had to watch over his diet. But it was extremely fatiguing to come home from lunch when her lessons obliged her sometimes to run to the other end of Paris. Going, coming, always in movement. And the lessons did not bring in enough money. Some urgent expense was always turning up upon which she had not reckoned. The boy was growing very large, and Annette regretted that he was not like those little beans which never grow faster than their shells. She had to clothe him. Nor could she permit herself to neglect her own appearance; her occupation would have prevented this if her pride had not done so. So she had to find new resources. Copying to be done at home, the work of some foreigner or a translation to be revised (an ungrateful task, poorly remunerated); secretarial work, one or two mornings in the week (also poorly remunerated); but all these things, taken together, were enough. To earn money by any means! Annette did many things at once. She made herself hated by the hungry rivals whom she thrust out of her way in her pursuit of bread. But this time the devil could take the hindmost. No more sentimentality! She had no time for it. You cannot go back and pick up those who have fallen. It was true that she sometimes had the vision in passing of some strained face that stared at her with hostile eyes, some evicted competitor whom she would gladly have helped in other days. A pity, but she did not have the time. She had to get there first. She knew now where to find work, and she knew the shortest way to it. Her diplomas, her degree, gave her an assured superiority. And she was not unaware that she had advantages on another side, the personal side, her eyes, her voice, her way of dressing, her skill in handling her clients. Between her and other applicants they rarely hesitated. Those that were sacrificed could not forgive her.
Her new life was established on a healthily rigorous system. No empty room for useless thoughts. From one day to another, every day was as full as a nut, full and hard. After the trepidation of the first weeks, when she did not know whether she could manage to live and keep her child alive, she became used to it, she grew more confident, she even ended by finding pleasure in the difficulties she had overcome. No doubt, in the rare moments when the necessity of acting no longer held her mind tense, when at night she laid her head on her pillow, there were times before she went to sleep when her accounts, the thought of her budget, weighed upon her. . . . If she dropped on the road? . . . If she fell ill? . . . I won't. . . . Peace, I must sleep. . . . Happily, she was tired; sleep did not keep her waiting And when the day returned, there was no longer room for those "ifs" and apprehensions. No more room for that which enervated, enfeebled, broke the soul. Penury and toil put everything in its proper place—that which belonged to the necessary and that which belonged to luxury.
The necessary: daily bread. Luxury: the problems of the heart. . . . Could she have imagined it? These problems seemed to her now of secondary importance. All very well for those who have too much time on their hands! She had neither too much nor too little. Just enough. One thought for each thing she did, and not one to spare. So, full of strength, she felt like a well-trimmed ship that is launched on the waves.
She was in her thirty-third year, and nothing had yet wasted her energies. She perceived that she not only did not need protection but that she was stronger without it. The difficulty of her life invigorated her. And its first benefit was in liberating her from the obsession of Julien, from the nostalgia of love, which, dull or violent, had poisoned all her past years. She realized how satiated she was with sentimental dreams, sweet things, tender things, hypocritical sensuality; merely to think of them was repugnant to her. To be occupied with the rough facts of life, to undergo its wounding contact, to be obliged to be hard herself—that was good, it was vivifying. A whole part of herself, the best part perhaps, certainly the healthiest, was born again.
She no longer dreamed. She no longer tormented herself, even about her child's health. When he was ill she did what had to be done. She did not think about it beforehand. She no longer thought about it, indefinitely, afterwards. She was ready for everything, she was confident. And that was the best medicine. Dining these first years of desperate toil she was not ill a single day, and the child caused her no real anxiety.
Her intellectual life was no less curtailed than her emotional life. She scarcely had time to read any longer. She might have suffered from this, but she did not. Her mind made up the deficiency from its own resources. She had enough to do to sort and arrange her new discoveries. For during these first months she discovered a great deal; she discovered everything. And yet in what respect had things changed? As for work, she had been very familiar with that—or she had thought she was familiar with it. And this city, these people were just the same to-day as yesterday.
Between one day and the next, however, everything had changed. From the moment she had begun to seek her bread she had made the real discovery. It had not been love, not even maternity. She carried these things within her, but her life had expressed only a small portion of herself. Hardly had she passed into the camp of poverty, however, than she discovered the world.
The world varies, according as one considers it from above or from below. Annette was in the street now, between the rows of houses that stretched away on both sides: she saw the asphalt, the mud, the menace of the motor-cars and the flood of passers-by. She saw the sky above (rarely luminous)—when she had the time! The space between vanished: all that had formed the object of her life hitherto, society, conversation, theatres, books, the luxury of pleasure and the intelligence. She knew very well that they were there and she might have enjoyed them, but she had other things to think about. Watching her steps, looking out for herself, hurrying. . . . How all these people ran! . . . From above one saw nothing but the meandering of the river: it seemed calm, and one did not notice the strength of the current. The race, the race for bread. . . .