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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Birdsong, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History and the Future
Love and Hate
Sex and Gender
Nature, War, and Morality
Summary
Analysis
The Azaires’ home stands proudly on the boulevard du Cange, an unassuming street in the French city of Amiens. The street is surrounded by nature; gardens with a “wild, overgrown look,” numerous trees, and small canals which lead to the river Somme. The house is curiously built, with a strange shape and angles, and it has a “formidable front door.” The traffic leading to the house suggests that it is the home of a “substantial man.” The interior is plain and unassuming, and the strange shape of the house lends to mysterious rooms and passageways. It is “a place of unseen footsteps.”
The house on the boulevard du Cange is a reflection of René Azaire, the patriarch of the family, and his power. Like the front door, René is a “formidable” man, and according to his standing in society, quite “substantial.” The interior of the house is a reflection of René’s wife, Isabelle. She too is “mysterious” and “unassuming,” and Faulks’s comparison of Isabelle to the domestic sphere underscores the sexist society in which they live. The “wild” and “overgrown” gardens are evidence of nature and its indifference to human life, and leading to the river Somme (where the bloodiest battle of World War I will take place), the neglected gardens also foreshadow the future violence of war.
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Stephen Wraysford unpacks his belongings from a metal trunk in one of the bedrooms. Like the rest of the house, the room is plain but tastefully decorated, and flowers sit in a vase on the dresser. He cleans up and dresses for dinner, but the house is huge and he is unsure of which door to go through. In his confusion, a maid directs him into the dining room.
Again, the interior of the home is a reflection of Isabelle. Stephen later notes that Isabelle is not beautiful, yet she is alluring and wears the latest fashions better than any other woman. Like the room, Isabelle is “plain but tastefully decorated.” The confusing floorplan of the house and Stephen’s inability to find the dining room makes his ease in locating the red room after he falls in love with Isabelle all the more significant.
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The Azaires are already seated at the table. Madame Azaire stands up and her husband, René, introduces her quickly and dismissively. The children, Lisette, who is sixteen, and Grégoire, who is ten, are also present. It is quickly established that Stephen is twenty years old and has been sent by his employer to learn about the process of textile manufacturing from René, who owns two local factories. René is only forty years old but looks much older, and he has “an alert, humourless glare.”
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René mentions that the laborers’ unions have made it difficult for him to run his business, and the workers are unhappy about new machinery that threatens to replace their labor. As Lisette flirts obviously with Stephen, Madame Azaire avoids eye contact with him. Just as dinner ends, the doorbell rings and Monsieur Bérard and his wife, Madame Bérard, are shown into the room by the maid.
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The friends begin to talk over drinks, and Bérard tells René that the dyers employed by other factories have called a strike to begin the next day. René is upset by the strike; however, Bérard appears to enjoy delivering the bad news. Bérard begins small talk, and Stephen mentions he is from England.
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Bérard and René are subtly critical of England. They are surprised when Stephen says that they have trains there, and they make mention of the constant rain and fog. Stephen remarks that last year it rained more in Paris than in London, but the men continue. They ask Stephen if he eats meat most days for breakfast, and when he says he does, they are incredulous.
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As the friends talk, birds can be heard singing from the garden. René mentions that he has a fondness for patriotic songs, such as “Marseillaise,” which the French troops sang as they went off to fight the Prussians. “What a day that must have been!” declares René. Bérard disagrees, claiming that when “art is put to practical ends it loses its essential purity.” Stephen says that any song that elicits an emotional response should be valued.
René suggests a game of cards, and Madame Azaire excuses herself, claiming that she has a “slight headache.” Madame Bérard is appropriately concerned, but René reassures her. “It’s just her nerves. Think nothing of it.” Bérard notes that Madame Azaire is “a delicate creature,” and René remarks on her “nervous temperament,” which in his opinion “signifies nothing.”
As the foursome play cards, talk turns to the dyers’ strike. René states that what the dyers really need is “someone to call their bluff.” He doesn’t believe that the strike will last long once they become hungry. Bérard warns René that as a town councilor, that may not be the smartest course of action. René quickly dismisses him.
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Bérard and his wife soon leave, and it begins to rain. Stephen excuses himself to his room, where he sits and listens to the sounds of the night. An owl calls in the distance, and Stephen begins to write in his journal. He has kept the journal for five years now, and he encrypts his writing in a secret code, made possible by his extensive education in Greek and Latin. Stephen’s need for secrecy stems from his “natural openness and quick temper,” which often gets him into trouble. Stephen has learned “not to trust his responses, but to wait and be watchful.”
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He is distracted from his writing by the sound of a woman’s voice. The sound is vague, but Stephen senses that something is wrong, and he sneaks down the stairs to investigate. He hears crying and the unmistakable sound of someone being struck. He recognizes Madame Azaire’s voice begging René, and Stephen clenches his fists in anger, before slipping back up the stairs to his room undetected.
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Stephen returns to his journal entries. His journey from England, the train through France, and René Azaire and his children are all noted in the pages. Stephen has even mentioned Bérard and his wife, but he is surprised to discover that he has not mentioned Madame Azaire in the journal at all.
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The next day, Stephen accompanies René to his factory, which is located in a poverty-stricken area of town called the Saint Leu quarter. He meets Meyraux, René’s senior man who acts as a messenger between René and his workers. Most of the factory workers are women, and they work mostly by hand, a process that Stephen considers “old-fashioned.”
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René informs Meyraux that Stephen is visiting from a textile company in Manchester, which happens to sell the same fabric as René for two-thirds of the price. Stephen’s company is one of René’s most important customers, and René hopes that they are considering investing in his own factory.
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Meyraux is suspicious of Stephen, and suspects that René is looking to import English workers and machinery, costing French jobs. Meyraux notes that what the industry really needs, instead of less workers and more machinery, is more investment and understanding on behalf of owners.
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René claims he doesn’t have any money to invest in the business, and instead can “only retrench.” René proposes cutting the pay of salaried employees by one percent and raising output by five percent. In addition, he will reclassify any employees not qualified to run machinery as “untrained workers” and adjust their pay accordingly.
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Meyraux is calm and unsurprised, and remarks that René is offering his workers less than the striking dyers. René calls their strike “nonsense” and demands to know who is behind it. “What is behind it,” says Meyraux, “are attempts of the owners to use slave labour at diminishing levels of pay.” Meyraux does, however, identify Lucien Lebrun as an important player in the strike.
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René quickly dismisses Lucien as a threat and continues his disagreement with Meyraux. As the two men bicker, Stephen’s thoughts wonder to Azaire’s mansion and his quiet wife. Stephen’s thoughts are interrupted by René looking for support and agreement in his argument. Stephen quickly agrees and turns his thoughts back to Madame Azaire, momentarily disturbed by how easily he acquiesced to René. Meyraux refuses to continue the discussion in Stephen’s presence. “Of course,” Stephen says. “Nothing personal.”
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Later, back in his room, Stephen uses the code word “pulse” for Madame Azaire in the pages of his journal. He thinks of her as perfect; attractive and fashionable, yet modest and unrevealing. Despite her perfection, he detects “some other element” as her “pulse,” and Stephen is convinced that there is “some keener physical life than she was actually living in the calm, restrictive rooms of her husband’s house.”
Days later, René suggests that Meyraux bring Stephen with him to eat lunch with the factory workers. He does, and on the third day of this, Stephen abruptly leaves in the middle of lunch, claiming to feel “faint.”
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The next day, René asks Stephen if he is feeling better, and he quickly dismisses his symptoms as a reaction to the dying chemicals used in nearby factories, which make it hard for him to breathe. René seems amused by Stephen’s vague upset and suggests a doctor, claiming, “I don’t like to think of you having some kind of fit.”
Madame Azaire quickly tells René to leave Stephen alone. After all, she says, he says he’s fine. René appears irritated, but then he “smiles sardonically” and asks his wife if she has heard her “minstrel” again in her “wanderings in town.” Madame Azaire corrects her husband, claiming that she doesn’t wander but “runs errands.” He dismisses her again, and Stephen must suppress the urge to defend her.
Bérard and his wife stop by again after dinner, as they do on most evenings, and this time they bring along Madame Bérard’s mother, who insists on being called Aunt Elise. Bérard, an “authority on the important families in town” and himself of “superior breeding,” commands the conversation. Madame Azaire mostly ignores him, interrupting occasionally to introduce topics of her own choosing, leaving Bérard “no choice but to cut her off,” which he apologizes for with a “small bow of his head.” Stephen is captivated by Madame Azaire, and while she is not beautiful in a traditional way, he is “motivated by compulsion” to be near her.
The next day, Stephen finds Madame Azaire in the garden cutting roses. He boldly approaches her and removes the shears from her hands. As he begins to cut, he realizes that he has no idea what he is doing. “Let me,” says Madame Azaire, as she instructs Stephen on how to properly cut the flowers.
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Stephen thinks to himself that Madame Azaire has “intrigue and worldliness beyond her obvious position,” and in the course of their short conversation, she reveals that Lisette and Grégoire are her step-children. Their mother had died two years earlier, and she is René’s second wife. Suddenly, Stephen reaches out and grabs Madame Azaire’s hand “without thinking.”
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Madame Azaire begs Stephen to let go of her hand, yet she doesn’t loosen her grip. Stephen asks her about the sounds he heard that night in the hallway, and she continues to protest. “You must respect my position,” she states. Stephen lets go of her hand and responds, “I will,” before leaving the garden.
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The next day, Stephen is eating his lunch in a café when he sees Madame Azaire walk by. He quickly pays and runs to catch up with her. She is surprised to see him, and suddenly, the door of a nearby building opens and a friendly man invites her inside. She identifies Stephen as a friend, and the man invites him inside as well.
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The man introduces himself as Lucien Lebrun, and he explains to Stephen that he lives in a small apartment in the building with five other people. Lucien turns to Madame Azaire and, addressing her comfortably, asks if she has heard the good news about the men who were able to go back to work.
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Madame Azaire turns to Stephen, sensing his confusion, and explains that she brings food to Lucien to pass around to the dyers and their families who are in need, since many of them “find it hard to live.” René doesn’t know, she claims, but since the dyers don’t technically work for him, she doesn’t consider her “Christian charity” a betrayal. “You mustn’t think badly of me,” she says. “I am loyal to my husband.”
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Madame Azaire was born Isabelle Fourmentier, the youngest of five girls to a family in the city of Rouen. Isabelle’s parents are indifferent and neglectful, and her father is disappointed that she was not born a boy. Her eldest sister, Mathilde, is temperamental and sullen, and the next two eldest, Béatrice and Delphine, have formed an exclusive alliance. The second to youngest Fourmentier, Jeanne, while only two years older than Isabelle, is her only family support, and the person she loves most in the world.
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Years earlier, at her sister Béatrice’s wedding, Isabelle had met an infantry officer named Jean Destournel. Jean courted Isabelle for a year, but her father intervened, telling Jean he was “too undistinguished” to marry his daughter. Jean wasn’t sure he even wanted to marry Isabelle, but he was nevertheless intimidated by her father, and he quickly ended their relationship.
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Isabelle was heartbroken after Jean left her, but over the next three years she grew into a “strong-willed” woman with “certain taste” and “assurance of opinions.” Isabelle’s father tired of her independence, and when he heard of the death of René Azaire’s wife, he quickly arranged their marriage. René promised Isabelle some independence once they were married, and she agreed, eager to leave her father’s home.
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Isabelle has had little problem transitioning to become Madame Azaire. She is fond of Lisette and Grégoire, and she is an “affectionate and dutiful wife to her husband.” She doesn’t love René and he knows it, but he views love as “unnecessary emotion.”
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René believes children are “important proof of his standing in society,” and Isabelle agrees to have more. René approaches sex with his wife in a “businesslike and predatory manner,” and she submits to him, not quite understanding his cold approach and refusal to talk about the act.
When Isabelle does not become pregnant, René blames himself, and his frustration affects his ability to perform sexually. He begins to ignore Isabelle, and she becomes frightened of him. Now, at twenty-nine years old, Isabelle looks at the visiting young Stephen as a sort of “third child,” although she admits that even this awakens a “motherly tenderness” in her.
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Early one morning, Stephen rises early. The Azaires are planning a day on the water gardens with Bérard and his wife, and they have invited him to join. Lisette appears especially excited by this, and they make their way down to the waterway to board Bérard’s flat-bottomed boat. He directs each of them to a seat on the boat, and Stephen is seated directly across from Isabelle.
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Cramped in the small and uncomfortable boat, there is no breeze and it is exceedingly warm. The water is stagnant, and Stephen tries to situate his feet so that he does not touch Isabelle across from him. He notes her attractive ankles and calves as he positions himself.
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Bérard captains the boat, talking excessively about the area and who lives where, referring to the dank riverbed as beautiful. Stephen tries to catch Isabelle’s eye, but she avoids his gaze. Exhausted in the heat, Bérard allows René to captain the boat and they soon stop for lunch.
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On shore, no one is particularly hungry, and as René smokes and Bérard naps, Stephen carves a small figure out of wood. Lisette asks him what he is carving, and he gives her the small figure as a gift. Stephen begins a new carving, intending to give it to Grégoire, and they soon get back on the boat.
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Stephen is disgusted by the water; rats swim by and the entire area seems to be in a state of decay. Isabelle too is miserable, and she loosens the neck of her dress in the unbearable heat. She is suddenly less concerned over the placement of her feet, and her leg rests firmly against Stephen’s.
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As their trip comes to a close, René begins to remark on how wonderful the day has been and how beautiful the river is. Isabelle becomes suddenly aware of the placement of her leg and sits upright, rigidly.
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Back in his room, Stephen takes a cool bath and sits down with a deck of cards. He begins to move the cards about in a sequence taught to him by a friend of his grandfather who made his living telling fortunes at fairs. He files the cards into two piles, telling himself that if the queen of diamonds appears in the left pile before the jack of clubs lands on the right, Isabelle will be his. He smiles to himself, recognizing the ridiculousness of his game.
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Stephen soon falls asleep to the sounds of birds outside and dreams the reoccurring dream that has plagued him for most of his life. In his dream, a bird is trapped in a window and he tries to free it, when suddenly the entire room is full of birds, all flapping their wings and attempting to peck at his face.
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The next day, a telegram arrives from London requesting that Stephen conclude his work and get back. He responds, asking for an additional month to complete his work, and panics at the idea of leaving before “resolving the conflicting passions that are threatening to overpower him.”
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The threat that the other textile workers will strike with the dyers heats up, and the following day at the factory, Meyraux speaks to the employees as a group. He says that while he hopes one body will one day represent all workers, right now is a poor time for a strike. Foreign competitors are threatening their business, and he urges them to stay and work.
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Suddenly, several protestors supporting the dyers burst into the factory, followed by Lucien Lebrun and the police. Lucien addresses the crowd from Meyraux’s place at the head and encourages all the workers to stick together against unfair wages and poor working conditions. “We must think of our wives and children,” Lucien cries.
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An unknown man yells from the crowd, “Talking of wives, we all know what they say about you, young man!” Another man loudly protests about the “spy from England” listening in on their meetings. Ignoring the building violence, Stephen asks a worker next to him what was meant by the man’s wife comment. The worker informs him that “Lucien and the boss’s wife [Isabelle] are very good friends.”
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A brawl breaks out in the factory and Stephen is punched in the face by an unseen assailant. He punches back, hitting another man in the face, as the women workers and police usher the dyers and protestors out of the factory. The police “randomly arrest two of the most disreputable-looking” men, and the factory goes back to work.
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Later in his room, as Stephen’s hand begins to swell, he realizes that he has fallen in love with Isabelle. At dinner, René comments on the disruption at the factory and Stephen tells him he thinks it best if he stays away for a few days to allow everyone to cool down.
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The next day after René departs for the factory, Stephen feels like a child home sick from school who is “eavesdropping on this female life.” Isabelle directs the maids and the cook, and she receives a delivery from the butcher boy.
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Isabelle asks Stephen if he will be taking lunch with her and Lisette, as Grégoire is still in school. He agrees, and the three enjoy an informal meal with plenty of wine. In response to a question about his parents, Stephen tells the women that he was an orphan, raised by grandparents and then in “an institution.” He says that he will be returning to England soon, and “the atmosphere becomes thick.” Lisette excuses herself for a walk in the garden and perhaps a nap, and Stephen is left alone with Isabelle.
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With Lisette gone, Stephen grabs Isabelle’s arm, and when she protests, he kisses her. He confesses his love for her and kisses her again, and she does not this time resist. Suddenly, she pulls away and runs from the room. She leaves him standing alone and goes to her room, where she paces and cries, “choking with passion for him.” Isabelle returns to the dining room, where Stephen still stands, and tells him, “Come to the red room.”
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Isabelle quickly turns and leaves, and Stephen is afraid he won’t find the right room in the massive house. Near a locked door that leads to the servants’ quarters, Stephen finds Isabelle in a room with a brass bed and a red cover. “Isabelle,” he says for the first time.
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Stephen begins to tear Isabelle’s clothes from her body, and “the more she imagines the degradation of her false modesty the more she feels excited.” She begins to beg Stephen to take her, and she helps him remove the rest of her clothes. He pushes her to the bed and performs oral sex on her, something she has never experienced before. Isabelle continues to beg him, and then they have sex.
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Afterward, filled with “desire and happiness,” Stephen and Isabelle remain silently side-by-side on the bed, listening to the sounds of birds in the garden outside. Stephen tells Isabelle that he doesn’t have the strength to watch her about the house, living as René’s wife. “I shall give myself away,” he says. “You won’t,” says Isabelle. “And nor shall I. You will be strong because you love me.”
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Later, when René returns home from the factory, he is in a surprisingly good mood. The dyers’ strike does not appear to be spreading to his workers, and Bérard and his wife are planning a visit after dinner. René asks Isabelle how her day was, and she tells him that she spent some time reading. René then asks Lisette about her day, and she reports falling asleep in the garden and having a “very strange dream.” When her father asks what the dream was about, she giggles and says, “I’m not telling you.”
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Stephen arrives at the dining room door for dinner, and he briefly acknowledges René and Isabelle before quickly sitting in a chair. Stephen ignores Isabelle throughout dinner, engaging René instead about a fishing trip he has planned later in the week with Bérard. As the men converse, Isabelle escapes to her own thoughts.
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Isabelle wonders how long she will be able to “maintain the falsity of her position,” and thinks about her afternoon spent with Stephen. She left the red room at five o’clock, and she has not spoken to him since.
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After their time together, Isabelle still must tend to the “practical matters” of their affair. She has to launder the bedding and most of her underclothes; evidence of their love is all over. Isabelle manages time to bathe and wash the traces of Stephen from her skin and body, then she scours the tub and stops to “check and recheck the room for signs of adultery.”
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Isabelle doesn’t have the time or the privacy to wash the red bedcover without drawing attention, and she plans instead to throw it away—René will find nothing suspicious about a new bedcover. Isabelle feels “no revulsion for the stains and physical reminders of their afternoon,” instead seeing the marks as “the witness of an intimacy that pressed her heart.” Her sister, Jeanne, has taught her not to be ashamed of such things.
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Bérard and his wife arrive for a visit, and they all stand to move to another room for cards and drinks. As Isabelle stands, she is suddenly aware of Stephen’s eyes on her body. She feels naked and is suddenly “overpowered” by her “shame and guilt.” She begins to markedly blush, and René asks if she is feeling well. Isabelle insists that she is simply warm and excuses herself. Bérard and René exchange a glance; “Circulation problems,” Bérard says.
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Alone in her room, Isabelle hears a soft knock on her door. Stephen appears, having come to check that she is alright. He kisses her quickly and returns downstairs to René, Bérard, and their card game.
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The next day, Stephen takes a walk into town. René has told him not to return to the factory for a few more days, and he cannot bear to be around Isabelle without sharing parts of himself. With Isabelle, Stephen feels “an impulse to disclose” his life, and while this doesn’t frighten him, he “does not feel pleasure at the prospect of [talking about his past].”
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Stephen enters a cathedral, and kneeling in a pew, he prays “instinctively, without knowing what he did.” He asks God to save him and Isabelle.
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When Stephen returns to the mansion, he finds Isabelle reading in a small study. As she stands to greet him, he begins to kiss her, running his hands all over her body. He pins her to the wall and reaches under her dress, pulling at her clothing. “We must stop,” he says. They agree to meet in the red room, but neither of them move to separate. “Come to me,” Isabelle whispers. “Into me, now.”
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They have sex right there in the study, fully clothed and standing against the wall. “I love you,” Isabelle tells Stephen as she pulls away from him and runs her hands up and down his body. As Stephen begins to orgasm, Isabelle takes the last “three or four spasms in her mouth.” She does so “instinctually,” “almost from a sense of tidiness, not because it was something she had known about or done before.”
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“The red room,” Isabelle says, standing up. “In ten minutes.” She turns to leave, and Stephen kills time cleaning the floor and takes a short walk in the garden. He remembers the exact way to the room, and finds Isabelle waiting for him there, dressed only in a robe. She takes charge, undressing Stephen slowly, and the two spend the rest of the afternoon making love.
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After they wake, Stephen again asks Isabelle about the night he heard sounds from her bedroom. Isabelle tells Stephen that René “becomes frustrated” with her. After she failed to become pregnant, René assumed that there was nothing wrong with him since he has already fathered two children, but now he is “not so sure.” He resents Isabelle for being young and claims that she “castrated him.” Now, he tries to become “excited” by “doing strange things.”
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Isabelle tells Stephen that René hits her, and while it is not terribly painful, she finds his strange sexual acts “humiliating.” She claims that they haven’t had actual intercourse for over a year, and they “both know he only comes to hit her now,” but they “pretend.” As Isabelle and Stephen talk, neither feels guilty about their affair, and doves sing in the garden below.
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Meanwhile, René has no reason to suspect Isabelle and Stephen’s affair. He is not threatened by Stephen, and he is not in love with his wife either. Mostly, René feels guilty for marrying Isabelle and stealing her youth, and while his wife was initially receptive towards him, his neglect has turned her sour. René had “awakened her emotional and physical appetites,” but had left her long ago for “a long, unnecessary battle with his own shortcomings.”
On the weekend, Stephen agrees to go on the fishing trip to the Ancre River with the Azaires. Bérard is unable to come along after all, and Stephen boards the trolley with the family and heads to the countryside. They take a second train from Albert to Beaumont and arrive on the water. After an unsuccessful morning fishing, they all travel into the village of Auchonvillers to a small café Bérard has recommended for lunch.
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At the small café, Stephen and the Azaires eat unappealing fish and drink wine. Sitting across from Isabelle, Stephen knows he will never return to London. He feels too strongly for Isabelle, but in addition to his tender feelings, he has “an overpowering sense of curiosity” to see where their relationship will go.
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After lunch, they return to the river, and Stephen finds a secluded tree to rest under. Suddenly, a hand grabs his shoulder, and he turns to finds Lisette standing beside him.
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“You expected it to be someone else, didn’t you?” Lisette asks, before promptly informing Stephen that she knows all about him and her step-mother. She had heard them that first day in the garden from an open window, and she had also heard Stephen sneak into Isabelle’s room later that night to check on her.
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Lisette tells Stephen that he “shouldn’t have led her on” by giving her the wood carving, and she tells him that her body is not the body of a child. “Touch me, then, touch me as you touch her.” He refuses, but Lisette grabs his hand and places it between her breasts, and Stephen feels “the reflex of desire.”
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Stephen tries to placate Lisette with a kiss, but she declines, instead placing his hand under her skirt. Stephen becomes slightly aroused and doesn’t immediately pull his hand away. When he does, he grabs Lisette’s arm and tells her to never again behave this way. She stiffens under his touch. “I promise,” she says. “I want to go home now.”
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One day while in the red room, Stephen tells Isabelle about Lisette’s advances. Isabelle asks him if he thinks Lisette is ready to make love to a man. He answers yes, but reassures her that he is not interested. Isabelle is less concerned about Stephen’s potential feelings for Lisette and is more worried that this difficult time in her young life means that Isabelle has “a duty to stay and look after her,” instead of running away with Stephen.
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Stephen reminds Isabelle that Lisette and Grégoire are not her children, and he informs her that he is supposed to return to London next week. He suggests they go to a remote place in England, and Isabelle suggests that he stay in France and work locally. “Not that, Isabelle. You know that won’t work.” As he begins to seduce her again, Isabelle agrees to run away with him.
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Later René tells Stephen and Isabelle that he heard a “strange story” about someone visiting Lucien during the strike and delivering food. Stephen says that he heard of many men bringing food to the dyers’ families, but René says this was a woman.
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Isabelle confesses suddenly. “I don’t think it’s strange. It was me.” Isabelle tells René that the people were hungry and she fed them. She would do it again, she says, and René becomes angry, telling her that he has heard “another piece of tittle-tattle.” According to rumor, the woman was also “enjoying some liaison with Lebrun.” Isabelle denies the affair, claiming, “Not with Lucien. With Stephen.”
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Isabelle apologizes to René, claiming it was not done to hurt him. René demands to know where in the house the affair took place and wonders what her father will think. “Bitch,” he says. “Your father told me and I never listened.”
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“What can you expect from a woman you have treated as you have treated Isabelle?” Stephen asks. René, clearly embarrassed that Stephen knows his secret impotence, kicks him out of the house. “I will leave your house,” he says, “and I am taking your wife with me.”
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“I don’t want this,” Isabelle claims. She states that she doesn’t know how to behave now or whom to love. She doesn’t fully trust Stephen’s love either, she says. “How do I know that you love me, Stephen? How can I tell?” Turning to René, Isabelle asks, “Why should I trust you when you have given me so little reason to even like you?”
Isabelle tells René that she is going to her room to pack, and as she leaves the room he yells, “You go with him and you are going to hell!”
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Isabelle packs a few dresses and her framed pictures of her family and meets Stephen in the foyer. She can’t bring herself to say good-bye to the children, and as Isabelle and Stephen walk out the door, both Lisette and Grégoire watch from the stairs.
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The children stand terrified as René goes from room to room, tearing apart beds and searching for evidence of Isabelle and Stephen’s affair. He goes through every room in the house before giving up, forgetting about the red room.
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Stephen and Isabelle board a train and end up in the spa town of Plombières. Finally alone together, Isabelle asks Stephen about his childhood. Stephen tells her that his father abandoned his mother once she became pregnant, and after he was born, he went to live with his grandparents. Stephen’s mother ran away with another man, and after his grandfather was sent to prison “on some small charge,” he was sent to an institution.
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Stephen tells Isabelle that a social reformer named Vaughan showed an interest in him and became his guardian. He funded his education, and Stephen says, “That’s it.” “That’s all?” Isabelle asks. “That’s all your life?”
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Stephen and Isabelle arrive in St.-Rémy-de-Provence, near Isabelle’s cousin, and Jeanne wires them money to secure an apartment. Stephen takes a job as an assistant to a furniture maker, and Isabelle tends to their home.
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Their life together is quiet but comfortable, and Isabelle doesn’t miss her life with René. They spend most of their time together, even in sleep, but Stephen finds that “the closeness of Isabelle’s unconscious body makes him feel uneasy.” Stephen spends many nights on the couch, staring thoughtlessly at the ceiling.
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After two months, Isabelle has settled comfortably into her new life when she misses her menstrual cycle. Isabelle notes that “she had stopped hemorrhaging herself away; her power was turned inward where it would silently create.” She mentions nothing to Stephen.
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On day while walking in town with Stephen, Isabelle becomes faint and must sit down. Stephen begins to fuss over her, and she nearly tells him that she is pregnant—yet something stops her. She wishes she could just present Stephen with the child. To Isabelle, her pregnancy is nobody else’s business, “even the man who had caused [it].”
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Isabelle is convinced that Stephen won’t understand her connection to her unborn baby. She imagines it is a boy, and the baby satisfies a deep need that she didn’t realize she had; “it was as though she had become conscious of a starving hunger only after having eaten.” Isabelle’s feelings for her baby make her nostalgic for her own family, or at least for Jeanne, and she begins to feel guilty for what she has done. She has already confessed her sin to the local priest, but his penance is “unsatisfying.”
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Now, in the street with Stephen, Isabelle cannot bring herself to tell him her secret. He offers her a piece of cake in case she hasn’t been eating well, and a large pigeon descends on them, looking for a stray piece of cake.
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“Jesus Christ!” Stephen yells in response to the bird. Isabelle can’t understand. “It’s only a pigeon,” she says. She swats the bird away and turns to Stephen. “I’ve always hated birds,” he says. He tells Isabelle about a bad experience with a dead crow at the institution as a child, and she assumes that birds remind him of his awful childhood. Stephen claims it is only partly that. “I’ve always hated them, from long before that. There’s something cruel, prehistoric about them.”
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The next week, Isabelle feels a sharp pain in her stomach and goes to visit a doctor. He gives her a test and promises results in a week. She goes back to the church but not to confess. Ashamed, she looks up at the crucifix.
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Later, Isabelle writes a letter to Jeanne. She tells her of her pregnancy and her hesitancy to tell Stephen. The doctor has said that her pain is normal and that she need only rest. Isabelle tells Jeanne that she fears she has “gone too far” in her relationship with Stephen, and while she is lost, she thinks that she “can find her way home if she goes now.”
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Meanwhile, Stephen thinks of his grandfather’s cottage and considers taking Isabelle there. He does not feel sentimental for the cottage or his grandfather, but he wants to see Isabelle in the place of his past, “so that the ages of his life will be united.”
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When Stephen returns home, he finds Isabelle and most of her personal belongings gone. Many of her dresses still hang in the closet, and he holds one “against his face, then crushes it in his arms.” The next day he goes to work and comes home and makes himself dinner. He sits alone each night thereafter, drinking wine and thinking about nothing. Stephen feels “himself grow cold.”
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