"The truth lies waiting in the past . . . " is the tag line on the cover of my copy of Hélène Grémillon's The Confidant (Le Confidant translated from the French by Alison Anderson). But the truth is, apparently, a very elastic concept depending on who is telling you the story (and maybe why), what their association with you is and how you receive it. Beware of first person narrators. There is an intimacy in their storytelling, but the funny thing is . . . you just can't always believe their version of the truth. You feel like you are getting the insider's view. They were there. They saw it and they lived it, right?
"I got a letter one day, a long letter that wasn't signed. This was quite an event, because I've never received much mail in my life. My letter box has never done anything more than inform me that the sea-was-warm or that the snow-was-good, so I didn't open it very often. Once a week, maybe twice in a gloomy week, when I hoped that a letter would chance my life completely and utterly, like a telephone call can, or a trip on the métro, or closing my eyes and counting to ten before opening them again."
"And then my mother died. And that was plenty, as far as changing my life went: your mother's death, you can't get much better than that."
Paris in the mid-70s. In amongst all the letters of condolence Camille finds one that is thick, handwritten, running several pages long and unsigned. It's the first of many. Not a letter of condolence but it is or will shed light on Camille's childhood. She just doesn't know it yet. They are curious letters. They tell a story about a young woman named Annie who was an artist living in rural France between the wars-closer to the Second than the First. The letters arrive almost like clockwork. Every Tuesday like a serial story you read in a newspaper. A story with a little more information each week. It hooks you and carries you along giving you more plot, more red herrings, more cliffhangers. Camille thinks surely this must be some clever ploy by an out of work writer, as she is an editor and gets manuscripts in the mail often.
Little by little things are revealed. The letter writer is a mysterious 'Louis' who tells of his friendship with Annie and what happened in those interwar years when she meets the beautiful and sophisticated Madame M. Madame encourages her art and takes her under her wing. Madame is married but unhappy despite her loving husband and easy living situation. She has everything but the one thing she wants most. A child.
Do you sense what direction we are moving here? Camille is like a modern day detective as she tries to piece together who this Louis is, and why is he sending her these letters. Why is he telling her this story. Can it possibly be true and why her? She tries to discover just where Louis is mailing these letters. Surely the stamp cancellation telling which arrondissement in Paris he mailed them will help her find him. Or the places in the letters to which he refers will inform her just who Annie and Madame M. are and what, if any, their association with her is.
Camille's short narrations are interspersed with the longer storytelling that take the form of Louis's letters. Louis was in love with Annie and she with him until Madame M. entered the picture and turned Annie's head. Annie offers to do the unthinkable. To carry Madame M.s baby for her. And then war breaks out to muddy the already dark waters some more. Infer what you will from these letters. Just when you think you have it all figured out, and Camille too, Louis sends a parcel with a notebook filled with tiny print telling a story, the 'real' story as dictated to him by Madame. M.
Nearly the second half of the story is narrated by Madame M. And what a tale she tells. Is it indeed a 'tale' or is it truthful and factual. Which story is the correct, true story. Even now I wonder. Maybe shades of each are true. This is a story steeped in tragedy and sadness.
"Everything was crystal clear, filthy, but crystal clear."
The Confidant is at the heart a mystery. I think it is up to the reader to glean from the facts just where the truths lie. It is a story of revenge, desire, love, lust, deceit, madness. It plays out against the backdrop of WWII France, but the war really only serves as a backdrop rather than much of an actual 'player'.
I wanted to really love this story, but I have to be honest I have very mixed feelings about it. I like that the narrators are unreliable, and we'll discount the fact that none of the characters are particularly likeable. There was just something about the story that didn't quite work for me. Maybe it was the jarring manner in which the second story was introduced that felt so very unlike the first part. There are a lot of time shifts that make the reader really work to keep track of where we are. There are a lot of details, which help both clarify but also seemed to add a little confusion. It had all the right ingredients but maybe just in the wrong amounts? Maybe I wanted more from Camille. She was perhaps too much of an observer. I'm not sure but somewhere along the way I lost the thread and it never got it back. In the end I was a little disappointed that my April spent in Paris ended up being 'filthy, but crystal clear'. I wish I had managed to spend some time with M. Simenon or got to go to 13, rue Thérèse, but the month just flew by. Hopefully my month spent in the garden will be sunnier.
By the way, the top right illustration is the cover of the UK edition and the lower left the US edition. I much prefer the UK cover. I think the US illustration really misses the mark when it comes to conveying the right feel of the story. There is no Eiffel Tower and Paris is not really evoked, much like the War that plays out in the background.