Bonjour Ennui

Precocious Novelist Franchise Sagan, 21, is probably France's most successful export to the U.S. since French fried potatoes and Chanel No. 5. Her neat, sentimentally acid little accounts of old-hearted juveniles and middle-aged delinquents were widely cheered by the critics, eagerly bought by the customers. Still on the bestseller list after 16 weeks is A Certain Smile (TiME, Aug. 20), a thin quadrangle story about an ever-so-wise teenager, her ever-so-world-weary lover, the lover's all-understanding wife and the girl's rather sappy boy friend. In Harper's Bazaar, witty Playwright Jean Kerr (wife of New York Drama Critic Walter Kerr) gets a lot of certain laughs out of A Certain Smile, in a spoof that expresses the quintessence of Saganism:

Banal and I were classmates. Our eyes had met, our bodies had met, and then someone introduced us . . . A stranger across the booth spoke. "Monique, what are you staring at, silly girl?" It was Banal. Curious that I hadn't recognized him. Suddenly I knew why. A revolting look of cheerfulness had twisted and distorted those clear young features until he seemed actually to be smiling . . .

His voice followed me, humbly and at a distance like a spaniel. "Monique, why did you skip class? We were studying the Critique of Pure Reason. It was interesting, but I think Kant offers a false dichotomy. The only viable solution is to provide a synthesis in which experience is impregnated with rationality and reason is ordained to empirical data."

How like Banal to say the obvious . . . Why must we chatter fruitlessly and endlessly about philosophy and politics? I confess that I am only interested in questions that touch the heart of another human being--"Who are you sleeping with?"; "What do you take for quick relief from acid indigestion?"

Banal's voice droned on like a chorus of cicadas on a hot day until finally there was a statement I couldn't ignore. "Monique, I want you to meet my grandfather, Anatole. My rich grandfather.'' A slight, stooped man came toward me. He was no longer middleaged, but I liked that. I was so tired of these eager boys of 50. His hair, which was greenish white, might have been unpleasant had there been more of it. As he smiled gently, showing his small, even, ecru teeth, I thought, "Ah, he's the type that's mad for little girls." In fact, hadn't I read that he'd had some trouble with the police? . . .

I realized with a sudden stab of joy that finally I had met a man who was as bored as I was . . . Now Banal was speaking, in his infantile way. "Do you know Monique has never seen the sea?" Then a woman spoke, Anatole's wife. "Why, that's awful that this poor child has never seen the sea. Anatole, darling, you must take her to our little chateau by the ocean. I won't be able to come because I'm redecorating the town house. But there is plenty of food in the frigidaire, and Monique will be able to see the ocean from the bedroom. Here are the keys." I liked her for that . . .

We were in Anatole's open car. Overhead the sky was blue as a bruise. Anatole's voice seemed to come from a great distance: "Bored, darling?" I turned to him. "Of course--and you?" His answering smile told me that he was.

And now we were running up the long flight of steps to the chateau hand in hand like two happy children, stopping only when Anatole had to recover his wind . . .."My darling." he said. "I hope I have made it perfectly clear that so far as I am concerned you are just another pickup."

"Of course," I whispered. How adult he was, and how indescribably dear. So the golden days passed . . . And who could describe those nights? Never in my relationship with Banal had I felt anything like this. Ah, how rewarding it is to share the bed of a really mature man. For one thing, there was the clatter and the excitement four times a night as he leaped to the floor and stamped on his feet in an effort to get the circulation going. My little pet name for him, now, was Thumper.

The last day dawned cold and bright as a star. Anatole was waiting for me out in the car, so I packed my few belongings, ran a nail file through my curls, and joined him.

What shall I say of the pain of that ride back to Paris? . . . We pulled up to my front door, and then the blow fell. "Monique," he said, "little one. I have been bored with you. Nobody can take that away from us. But the truth is, and I know how this will hurt you, I am even more bored with my wife. I'm going back to her."

He was gone. I was alone. Alone, alone, alone. I was a woman who had loved a man. It was a simple story, prosaic even. And yet somehow I knew I could get a novel out of it.

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