The Kreutzer Sonata (La Sonate à Kreutzer)

It has definitely nothing to do with jealousy.

It is more dreadful than that.

It was just a kind of hatred and no events took part in it.

I killed her…

…because her life was the blatant denial of everything I loved…

…of all that mattered to me.

She was for me a living denial:

…she was constantly denouncing my slightest desire…

…my most trivial thought.

Why did we meet?

Why didn’t we stop looking at each other immediately?

I first saw her in a "cellar"…

…and I immediately got the feeling she would be out of my league.

Is it the reason why I started to long for her…

…as it had never happened before with another girl?

Why did I pay attention to her?

It was because of a mere nothing - the way her cheekbones were slightly bulging…

…and maybe also this constant look of sadness…

…that one could find even in her smile.

Almost one year ago, everything was fine.

I loved being an architect and I had the brightest future.

I had set up my own company…

…and I was in charge of major contracts.

After going through difficult times…

…I was finally successful.

Was I happier?

What kind of stress did I really experience in this late winter?

I feared to have sacrificed my best years to my ambition.

I was frantically in search of lost time…

…and yet I didn’t dare to leave the neighborhood of my twenties.

I had started thinking about getting married:

my loneliness was more humiliating than painful

and I thought my ego was also entitled to be satisfied.

I was bored and didn’t try anything to get out of my boredom.

I had stopped seeing in this world anything picturesque.

At the most, the dreary apathy of theses faces…

…could have been able to give me…

…a little comfort.

I liked thinking these kids were older than me…

…that their ways, their enthusiasms…

…were comparable to those I had experienced ten years earlier.

I needed a breath of fresh air.

Yet I was living in a wax museum.

The times of "good old fellowship" were gone.

I was going to become a mere "bourgeois"…

…someone being used, a "tourist" as we used to call them.

Because I was known in the neighborhood…

…I was still experiencing a kind of privilege.

But there was already a gap between me and the new generation.

What was she looking for in this place?

Just like me, she didn’t seem ready to live as a bohemian.

People in this place seemed to belong to the same family…

…but both of us were very different from them…

…and this fact made us suspect to the others.

I had the feeling she was as bored as me…

…that we’ve got the same defect…

…and owing to this I found her more attractive.

I was more and more suffering from being an outcast.

All the tricks were good…

…to try to maintain my unsteady prestige.

I came with a friend of mine, a journalist.

We pretended to study the youth

..so that our presence was less strange.

These tests were like a board game.

Our explanations were of course fanciful.

But we tried our best to be respectful of egos.

And everybody accepted to submit to our exam.

It was fun and it made me feel comfortable.

But it was also widening the gap…

…between them and I.

I felt like saying a last goodbye to the people of the neighborhood.

What was I waiting for?

Was it because of her presence?

I had discovered a few clues showing her relationship was coming to an end.

Our eyes met once or twice…

…and I had perceived in her look an obvious curiosity.

I started…

…to be hopeful.

It was strange that our meeting

in a so small place -

…did not happen before.

Our first meeting was disappointing:

It took place, by coincidence…

…in psychological circumstances.

I thought she had something mysterious.

But maybe I was wrong.

I was surprised by her trivial…

…and prosaic answers.

What I had called anxiety, deep torment…

was maybe just a kind of indifference…

…a kind of weakness of nature.

But it was difficult to admit I had made a mistake…

…and I couldn’t resist the temptation to seduce her.

Because of her lack of will…

…I expected to conquer her easily…

…and, hypocritically, I was satisfied.

Indeed, I despised her to be so easily bluffed…

…as she should have despised me…

…to be so cautious to seduce her.

She had no confidence in herself.

She was looking for someone who would be able to bully her…

…or at least be able to give her a goal

- something she was unable to discover by herself.

On my side, I was just thinking to adapt myself to her…

…and to study her.

I was planning to do it in this way…

…but I was the victim of my own imagination.

The girl in front of me, was she really the same person?

How could I be so blind?

As a substitute to her I fancied a creature of fiction

- a sort of ideal woman one could dream about at sixteen -

I tried to speak when she was silent, abusing myself on my own "construct".

I was just expecting one thing from her:

Not to demolish, by being suddenly frank…

…my laborious "construct".

My only goal was to get married.

I did not really care about her.

I just wanted her to be here when needed…

…in the place I had assigned to her in the plan I had drawn up.

I thought that at my age I have a right to what I stupidly called "love" or "happiness".

My only concern was my success:

a match between the event and my views.

I was not really surprised by the easiness of my victory.

I only wanted to see at work the sign of a benevolent destiny.

I only had to collect the ripe fruit.

All was in my favor:

She had given up her studies halfway.

She didn’t wish to go back to her parent’s.

And she had just put an end to her relationship.

I was confident:

she was impressed by the people I frequented

people I personally found boring.

Her life was dull and my friends were wonderful to her opinion.

She arrived from her countryside.

She had only met kids of her age who bullied her.

My concern for her made her accept the idea of getting married…

…in less time than I would have thought.

Why did she accept so quickly?

Was she ambitious or venal?

She could have found someone richer.

Was it out of spite or out of boredom?

Was it because she could not stand my insistence?

Because I knew, at least at that time…

…how to get to her vanity.

Did she stop believing in love and was ready to experience the worst?

Did she estimate that her decision was not so absurd?

Did she plan to take advantage of the weakness…

…she perceived in me?

When I was at the top of my anger I accused her of having yielded to despair…

…and to the most sordid plan.

I know for sure she never loved me.

Her face was always expressionless; she always expressed the same hostile passivity

…and the same resigned laziness.

She obviously loathed this marriage.

And yet, no union had ever been made so freely.

I always respectfully asked for her opinion.

I respected her freedom just as mine.

Her agreement was boosting my pride.

It was for me the most important thing.

What would be the next step?

I was a little bit worried about our future

…but I didn’t really want to think about it.

How could I be so wrong?

I believed a new era would come…

…an era totally different to what I experienced before.

I was eager to leave the neighborhood of my youth -

a youth I was estimating dull and congealed.

I despised people for getting stuck in their habit…

…for always experiencing the same dull pleasures

- pleasures I had been myself experiencing for too long.

I felt sorry for them…

…totally devoted to what I pretentiously called love.

Was I really in love?

Today I don’t believe it anymore.

Only my pride was at stake.

I was proud to see on their face…

…this benevolent irony that boosted my vanity.

Their poorly disguised jealousy…

…was my best support…

…my purest pleasure…

…and maybe the whole reason of my happiness.

Their jealousy was a sufficient judgment for me.

Nothing was sincere inside me…

…except the pleasure I got from their judgment.

I gave to myself the right to despise my past life.

I was not seeing on what a precarious basis…

…I was going to build my future life.

I was not aware of the boredom which already leaked out under our forced cheerfulness…

and of the grin our smiles could hardly hide.

A few months had passed since our wedding…

…and I had to recognize the obvious truth:

I had been wrong about her…

…in the same way she must have been wrong, I guess, about me.

We were the least compatible couple in the world.

We were still smiling at each other by courtesy…

…by habit… by pride.

It was difficult for both of us to admit our mistake.

By fear of destroying everything…

…I always postponed having with her a straightforward discussion.

I had hoped that our common life, our household problems and our work…