The tremor
The literary critic Gaëtan Picon wrote that Gilles “is, without any doubt, one of the greatest novels of the century—and one of those books in which the disarming sincerity of a man rises to the grandeur usually reserved to literary transpositions.” Released in serialized chapters, the first English translation of Gilles was published in 2024 by Tikhanov Library. You can read it here.
There came to him the desire to interrogate the first witness of his affair with Myriam who was offered to him, asides from Mr Falkenberg. So he called Ruth and asked for a private meeting. She seemed surprised, but very cheerfully intrigued by his request and offered to wait for him that very day at the Sorbonne. At the last moment, he had an instant of embarrassed doubt, and wondered if she was thinking of some amorous venture, but as soon as he saw her he could see that she was a simple girl and a hundred miles away from any such idea. He suggested they walk together through Luxembourg.
“This is nice,” she said, “I needed to stretch my legs. I’ve just spent three hours in old Picto’s laboratory… As I haven’t had breakfast, excuse me…”
She bought a croissant and a chocolate bar.
“Then, let’s go to a cafe.”
“Oh no, I hate cafes, especially is this neighbourhood. They’re full of vagabonds.”
A moment later, he gave in to his impatience.
“What do you think of my relationship with Myriam Falkenberg?”
“What do I think? Why are you asking me this?”
“What do you think of my marriage to Myriam?”
She looked at him with great surprise.
“Your relationship and your marriage, those are two different things.”
“In fact…” Gilles wondered “I hadn’t thought of that.”
He shuddered. The fact that he had only ever thought of marrying Myriam and not of taking her suddenly took on a glaring significance.
Ruth looked at him with bewildered eyes and swallowed her croissant with difficulty.
“Come now, you’re Myriam’s lover.”
She had said: lover, in a strongly affectionate tone. Gilles sensed that she was virtuous and only obstinate about liberty in the theoretical sense.
“What?” Gilles gasped.
“What a prude you are,” she laughed.
She didn’t understand his interjection.
“You’re Myriam’s lover, that should be enough for you. Why should you want anything else? You have the incredible good fortune to be both perfectly free. And if you ask other people their opinion of your marriage, it’s because you’re not sure it’s right. This doubt is a second reason for ruling out something that is in itself unnecessary.”
Satisfied, she rubbed her hands where greasy flakes had become encrusted.
“You’re suffocating. At least get a lemonade from that kiosk.”
“If you want.”
He noticed once again that it was difficult to be sincere: Ruth, as well as Myriam, facilitated his hypocrisy.
However, he resumed the fight against himself.
“I can see very well that you are opposed to our marriage. Isn’t that a matter of principle for you? You’re not opposed to marriage in general? Are you?”
“No. But for you and her…”
She suddenly looked embarrassed. Gilles waited. She continued, without going very far:
“You’re both free, you can wait to get to know each other better. So you’re not sleeping together?”
Gilles found her comical.
“Ruth, are you a virgin?”
She blushed and nodded: yes.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” she shot back.
Gilles didn’t insist. She continued:
“Why aren’t you Myriam’s lover? She couldn’t ask for more. She’s not the one…”
She blushed and resented the thought of humiliating her friend.
“I never thought about it,” said Gilles.
“So what is it? Is it your religion?… No, certainly not. Are you religious?”
Ruth had said these last words with a rather sharp look in her eyes.
“Who says I’m not a believer?”
Gilles thought to himself: “How right I was to talk to that girl. Now I suddenly remember that I’m Catholic. Well, I’m not getting married in church. Myriam is Catholic, I know. But she has no taste for masquerades.” He surprised himself by rejoicing at the idea. He discovered that he was only throwing himself so boldly into marriage because of an open door: divorce. He didn’t want to marry Myriam religiously so that one day he could get married for real.
Ruth looked at him with a serious expression, which intrigued him. So he asked:
“What about you? You’re… Jewish, aren’t you?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. And I’m religious, very religious.”
Gilles was surprised, considered it, and perceived something.
“Does it shock you that Myriam is Catholic?”
Incidentally, Myriam had told him that her parents had had her and her brothers baptised.
“Oh yes.”
He could see what it was that Ruth was getting at.
“It’s not her fault,” he ventured. “It’s her parents…”
“Yes, but she… Well, personally, she doesn’t consider herself Catholic.”
Gilles frowned, suddenly feeling that he was coming up against something. He looked curiously at Ruth. What was a believing Jew? He asked:
“What does your faith mean?”
Ruth blushed again:
“I’m going to strike you as old-fashioned. But that’s the way it is. People should marry within the same religion.”
“What about you? Couldn’t you marry a Catholic?”
Ruth, troubled, shook her head.
“So you can’t marry three and a half quarters of… Christians, of the French.”
“No.”
“Then…”
Gilles suddenly wondered with violent curiosity what he thought of the fact that Myriam was Jewish, and what role this had played in their relationship. He sensed with surprise that it had played a role.
“So you wouldn’t want Myriam to marry me?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her? What was her response?”
“Oh, I’m in no place to give advice.”
“How so? You’re her friend.”
“I reckon she knows what she has to do. Besides, she’s more intelligent than I am.”
“But your spoke?…”
“Incidentally. But…”
Gilles said brusquely
“Anyways, that’s not the question. The important point is that Myriam is rich and I am poor.”
Ruth was surprised, she didn’t seem to have thought of that at all. Gilles saw that she was going to reinforce his hypocrisy.
“So what?” she said lightly.
“So a lot. I wonder if I’m not attracted by Myriam’s money.”
“When it comes to that, it will only add to her many other qualities. She is beautiful, very intelligent, and above all, she has personality.”
“Yes, of course.” acquiesced Gilles, making an effort.
These qualities, some of which were obvious, were no longer working on him. Had they really worked in the early days? What was the real cause of his disaffection? To say that he didn’t love her was vague. He looked hungrily at Ruth as if she would provide the reason. She did. Myriam was Jewish. What did it mean to be Jewish?
He was suddenly afraid he might let slip the truth: “I don’t love her, I’m only after her money.” These words would finally strike Ruth, who would tell Myriam. Giles was afraid, and with a few transitions brought the conversation to an end. Which was easy, because the young girl had only spoken by instinct, without thinking much, and she remained full of sympathy for Gilles, for whom she extended the admiration she had for Myriam.
Gilles ran from the Luxembourg to the Avenue de Messine. Myriam admired the brusqueness of Gilles’ introductions, which she saw as a sign of a quick intelligence, but which stemmed from the fact that Gilles, deep inside himself and dreaming aloud, did not always fully distinguish his interlocutors from one another, and continued with one the conversation begun with the other. As soon as he entered, he asked:
“Do you know what money is?”
Myriam looked at him with a smile; she could see that this was now a subject for a joke that would become habitual for them.
“No, you know that, not any more than you.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that, and I think we’re making a big mistake if we think we have the same idea.”
“What?”
“Money, it’s a very different thing for a poor person than for a rich person.”
She continued to smile incredulously. Seeing this, he stamped his foot. He would never again be able to shake off the persona he had gradually formed outside himself through half-sincerity, half-hypocrisy, distraction and humour, and which he could see reflected in Myriam’s eyes. Myriam liked this chiaroscuro. And it wasn’t just with Myriam. For some time now, he had noticed that a girl he had only seen for two hours was beginning to refer to this inevitable character, as if she were complicit in a plot. He didn’t understand that his character was taking shape.
“Come on, explain it to me,” she said cheerfully.
“Money is much more valuable to the poor than to the rich.”
“How about that?”
But he really wanted Myriam to know that he didn’t love her. That way, he would have a lot less to be embarrassed about, less to hide. He had gradually come to feel that he could obtain everything from her love without destroying it.
“I think that I’m speaking in riddles.”
He stopped again. Again he had a simple, brutal sentence on his lips: “I don’t love you physically; I will never love you physically.”
“You often make fun of me,” he began, “you think my imagination is playing tricks on me.”
“Of course, and it’s always the same. You always put yourself down.”
“Am I wrong? I can be right once, terribly right. You don’t know me, you love me too much.”
“I will always believe in what love tells me about you.”
She was too sure of the miserable rights that her love gave her. He feared the power of this love, humiliating, but relentless.
“No, I’m being serious, I assure you there’s a whole side of me that you don’t know.”
“Okay,” she said, a little hurt by his harsh tone.
Gilles paced across the room.
“In short,” he suddenly exclaimed with a violent solemnity, “in short, Myriam…”
He finished quietly:
“I’m appalled by my taste for your money.”
He had said, “I’m appalled,” and that word softened everything. She replied with another smile:
“I understand that, I too have a great taste for my money.”
Gilles was touched and refreshed by this answer, which burst forth with such a force of innocence. Were they not two children, surprised by happiness as others are by misfortune? Wasn’t he the more childlike of the two when he took fright at himself and thought he saw the werewolf in his mirror? He wasn’t so bad.
He took her mouth. The excitement still made those big lips clumsy. At least the abominable Gilles thought so, as he never prolonged his caresses and never took her to the threshold of all these metamorphoses.
As he felt his own mouth growing weary, he thought of a more energetic gesture, of toppling her onto the sofa, stripping that delicate bust whose graces were obvious, rushing everything, freeing her from the embarrassment of being a virgin. Desire rose up in him like a generous anger against the evil he was inflicting on her.
But she was shaking terribly; she was seized by a tremor that frightened her and displeased her.
