Raymond Radiguet, the 16 year old author of The Devil in the Flesh / “Le Diable au Corps,” 1923, died at the age of 20, praised by no less then Jean Cocteau: He belonged to the solemn race of men whose lives unfold too quickly to their close.  The book, translated by many, including Kay Boyle, but which I read in Sheridan Smith’s translation, is a minor gem  of a coming of age story, with traces of Proust’s dictat that passion is only improved by absence, and of course, the opposite.

A sixteen year old boy who lives on the outskirts of Paris on the River Marn with his parents and younger sister falls in love with a nineteen year old young woman, already engaged to a man at the front.  As the story begins to engage it is April, 1917. The First Battle of the Marne, which the family could hear, is two and a half years in the past. The Second Battle of the Marne is three months in the future.

Marthe, the young woman,  is introduced to the narrator, the “I” of the story, whose name we never know, by the parents.  The connection is some water colors she has done which he dismisses as “quite obviously the work of a conscientious pupil in an art class.”  He is taken immediately, however, by her “daring,” as she stands on the foot board of the train carriage before it stops. As for himself, and against type, he is quite bold with her;

“You shouldn’t do your hair like that. Straight hair would suit you better.”

Suddenly I was terrified at what I had said. I had never spoken to a woman like that before.  I thought of what my own hair looked like.

His impression of her boldness is reinforced when he discovers “she had read Baudelaire and Verlaine and [was] delighted at her reasons for liking Baudelaire, though they weren’t mine.  I detected a rebellious spirit.”

We get the delightful honesty of a young man when he says:

“It’s not because I’m afraid,” I repeated to myself.  “It’s only her parents and my father that are stopping me from leaning over and kissing her.”

But deep inside me another boy was only too pleased that such a barrier existed.

“What a good thing I’m not alone with her,” he thought.  ”For I’d be just as afraid of kissing her and have no excuse for not doing so.”

The excitement of a new lover

I ran like a madman to her house and arrived in a quarter of an hour. Then, fearing that I might disturb her during dinner, I waited for ten minutes, bathed in sweat, in front of her gate.

And though she tells him early in the friendship that she is engaged, somehow that is no reason to break what has begun to build.  They go shopping for the matrimonial bed, together, and he picks what they will sleep on, cursing himself with the thought he will not share it with her, but proud as his ability to control her. We know the way the river is flowing when, caught up in the shopping spree, she phones her prospective mother-in-law and tells her she can’t keep  lunch date with her — she is too far away.

And the river is rushing when, after her wedding, with Jacques back at the front,  he gets a note:

“I cannot understand your silence.  Why don’t you come and see me? Have you forgotten that it was you who chose our furniture?

She has built a fire, and likes to stretch out before it.  He has some idea of friendship only, not dishonoring her or her husband.  But “I desired Marthe, but I did not understand my desire.”

As she slept , her head on my arm, I leaned over to look at her face, which was surrounded by flames.  I was playing with fire. One day, as I approached too close, though our faces were not touching, I was suddenly like the needle which, having moved a fraction of an inch beyond its mark, is in the magnet’s power. Is it the fault of the magnet or the needle? I became aware that my lips were on hers.  Her eyes were still closed, but she was quite obviously not asleep. I kissed her, amazed at my boldness, whereas in fact it was she who had drawn my head toward her mouth.  Her hands clung to my neck; they would have held me as fast in a shipwreck.  And I did not understand whether she wanted me to save her or to drown with her.

A few pages later:

I was drunk with passion.  Marthe was mine; and it wasn’t I who said so, but she. I could touch her face, kiss her eyes, her arms, dress her, hurt her ; she was mine. In my ecstasy  I bit her in places where her skin was exposed, so her mother would suspect she had a lover.  I would have liked to mark her with my initials. In my childish savagery I rediscovered the ancient significance of tattoos.  Marthe said: “Yes, bite me, mark me.  I want everyone to know.”

Jealousy rises.  Both mothers begin to suspect.  Even when Jacques is home on leave she wants to see him.  When Jacques is wounded, she won’t go see him, not wanting to leave her lover.   And, or course, she gets pregnant and the story comes to an end, which you may discover for yourself.  It is happy or not happy, depending on you, dear reader…..

I’m not sure how I came on this novel, though because of my current dragnet through WWI fiction, I suppose. A film was made in 1947, following the novel, though it is pretty hard to find, even in a French only version.  Here is mention of it at IMDB, and some viewer comments, that may make you wish we could get a copy here in the US.  Given the promising title there are, of course, several other movies of the same name, having nothing to do with the Radiguet novel of adultery against a serving soldier in WW I