Chapter 12 Chapter Six

The next morning, I took my father for a walk on the main road.We chatted merrily about unimportant things.On my way back to the villa, I proposed to pass through the pine forest.It was exactly 10:30, and when I was having a hard time, my father walked in front of me because the road was narrow and full of thorns.When I saw him stop, I knew he had seen them.I walk up to him.Lying on the pine needles, Cyril and Elsa fell asleep, showing signs of a rustic happiness.Even though I told them exactly what to do, seeing them like this made me feel heartbroken. Could Elsa's love for my father, Cyril's love for me, prevent them from being so young, so handsome, so close? …I glanced at my father, and saw him staring at them motionlessly, with an abnormally focused expression and an abnormally pale face.I take his arm:

"Liu wake them up, let's go." He cast a last glance at Elsa.Elsa was lying on her back, young and beautiful, bronzed all over, with brown-red hair on her head, and a faint smile on her mouth, like the smile of a young beauty who is finally caught up. …he turned his heels and began to stride. "Daughter-in-law!" he cursed in a low voice, "whore!" "Why do you say that? She's out of your hands, isn't she?" "That's not the case! Did you feel good seeing Cyril lying in her arms?" "I don't love him anymore," I said.

"Me too, I don't love Elsa," he roared angrily, "but it still hurts me. You know I lived with her, um...! It's more annoying...." I know this, it sure is more annoying!He probably felt the same burning desire as I did: to run and tear them apart, to take back his happiness, the happiness that had been theirs. "If Anna heard you! "What? What if Anna hears me?... Of course, she won't understand, or she will be upset, that's normal. But what about you?You, you are my daughter, aren't you?You don't understand me anymore, aren't you happy? "

How easy it was for me to manipulate his mind!I knew him so well that I was a little scared. "I'm not unhappy," I said, "but at the end of the day, things have to be faced: Elsa isn't one to hang on to old relationships. Cyril pleases her, you lose her.Especially after what you did to her, that kind of thing, people will not forgive..." "If I want." Father started, then stopped suddenly, looking panicked... "You're not going to make it either." I said affirmatively, as if discussing his chances of reconquering Elsa were a natural thing to do.

"I'm not thinking about it," he said, regaining his sanity. "Of course." I shrugged and said. This shrug means: "Impossible, my poor man, you are out of the race." We walked in silence. He didn't say a word to me until we got home.As soon as he entered the door, he hugged Anna, closed his eyes, and hugged her for a long time. Anna let it go, smiling and looking surprised.I went out of the room and leaned against the wainscoting of the hallway, shaking with shame. About two o'clock, I heard Cyril's soft whistle, and went down to the beach.He got me into the boat at once, and rowed out to sea.The sea was empty.No one would have thought to come out under such a hot sun.Once in deep water he lowered his sail and turned towards me.Before that, we barely spoke a word.

"This morning…" he began. "You shut up," I said, "Hey! You shut up..." He gently knocked me down on the awning.We were sweaty, slippery, clumsy, and eager.The boat swayed regularly below us.I looked at the sun right above my head.Suddenly, Cyril's eager and affectionate bowing sounded in my ears... The sun fell from the sky, exploded, and fell on me... Where am I?At the bottom of the sea, in the depths of time, in the depths of pleasure... I called out to Cyril, he didn't answer, he didn't need to answer me. Then came the coolness of the salt water.We laughed together, ecstatic, limp, grateful for each other.We have the sun, the sea, laughter and love.When in the future will we be able to have these with the tension and urge created by fear and guilt like this summer? ...

Think about it.Besides the very real physical pleasure that love brings me, I also feel a kind of spiritual pleasure. The word "make love" has an allure of its own, and it's easy to catch if you leave its meaning aside. The word "to do" is concrete and positive, combined with the word "love" which has an abstract poetic flavor, it fascinates me.I used to talk about them without a shyness, without embarrassment, and without paying attention to their taste.Now, I feel myself getting shy when my father looks at Anna a little more intently, when she's made a soft, lewd sound of late that makes us, my father and me, pale and look straight in the eye. When there is laughter outside the window, I will lower my eyes.If we told Ana that she laughed like that, she wouldn't believe us.She behaved not as her father's mistress, but as a girlfriend, a gentle girlfriend.But at night, probably... I forbid myself to have such thoughts, I hate ambiguous thoughts.

The days passed.I kind of forgot about Anna, my father and Elsa.Love makes me ecstatic, dreamy, soft and demure.Cyril asked me if I was afraid of having children.I told him I trusted him.He seemed to think it was a normal thing to do. Maybe that's why I give myself so easily to him: because he doesn't make me responsible, if I have children, he takes the blame.He took what I couldn't: responsibility.Besides, I'm slim and muscular, and I can't tell if I'm pregnant... I congratulated myself once for my youthful body shape. But Elsa was impatient, and kept asking this and that.I'm always afraid that people will catch me with her or with Cyril.She arranged it carefully, and always saw my father, bumping into him everywhere and everywhere.She then celebrated her imaginary victory, gloated at my father's suppression of his erotic impulses.My dad couldn't hide it, she said.Seeing this girl who is so close to a butcher's career professionally, seeing this girl who has been trained to accept the simple and straightforward actions that men can't wait to become so romantic and passionate.I was amazed to be so excited by such little details as a wink, a movement.True, she's not used to playing shrewd roles.It seemed to her that the role she was playing was probably psychologically cleansed to the extreme.Father gradually became entangled with Elsa, but Anna seemed to be oblivious to it.Father was gentler and more attentive than ever.This frightened me, because I attributed his attitude to unconscious guilt.The most important thing is that nothing happens for the remaining three weeks.We will return to Paris and Elsa will return to her home.If father and Anna are still interested, they will marry.

Cyril was also in Paris.Just as Anna could not prevent me from loving him here, so it was impossible for her to prevent me from meeting him there.He had a house in Paris, quite a distance from his mother's.I have pictured the window open to the strange sky of Paris, the blue, the pink sky, the cooing of the pigeons perched on the window sill, and Cyril and I lying on the narrow bed. scene.