Marie
Marc's brother's widow, and the woman he wanted to marry. Her refusal is the reason he marries Liana.
The book
At a glance
- Marc Royer's sister-in-law, and the woman he wanted to marry
- Marc's brother, now dead
- Le Paradis, a farm in the valley beyond Marc's land
- Three nights a week, on her terms
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeMarie married Marc Royer's brother. The brother is dead, and Marc, who had wanted to marry her himself, has spent years unable to think his way out of her. She runs a farm called Le Paradis in the next valley, and he drives up three nights a week and comes home no better off.
She gets far less space than the three people at the centre of the book, and she starts most of what happens in it. Marc has tried shame, pleading and cruelty on her, and none of it has reached her.
How the book draws them
- Le ParadisHer farm sits in a cultivated valley beyond the forest, and Marc stops his car on the first hill every single afternoon to look at it. He calls the spot an unmarked frontier. He is admitted three nights a week and no more.
- No relation of mineWhen he complains that he has been made to feel vulgar and disgusting, which she intended, her answer is that after all he is really no relation of hers. It never occurs to Marie that anything Marc does could insult her, and he cannot find a way to make it occur to her.
- Liana does not concern herEarly on Marc tells her about Liana gently and with shame, and offers to send the girl away at once if Marie will let him come more often. Marie says she does not see how Liana concerns her. Later he taunts her with Liana instead, lying in the big bed at Le Paradis comparing the two of them out loud, and that does not reach her either.
- The night she laughsWhen Liana leaves him, Marie laughs. That is the whole of her contribution to the marriage. Marc decides on the spot that he will not let Marie believe any woman can use him and throw him away, and rides up the hill the next day to fetch Liana back and marry her.
- What Marc cannot settleHe sits half the night on the veranda telling himself the standard consolations: that he only wants her because he cannot have her, that it is nothing but vanity, that he could accept his own humiliation and be free of it. He does not believe any of them, on the grounds that if it were that easy he would have stopped years ago.