Hubiera podido ser un domingo cualquiera en La Châtaigneraie, la residencia veraniega de los Donge. Toda la familia está allí reunida: nietos, abuela, y dos hermanos y dos hermanas, convertidos por obra del destino en dos matrimonios. Sin embargo, ese día perdurará en la memoria familiar como el domingo del gran drama, el domingo del intento de envenenamiento por arsénico. François y su mujer, Bébé, parecían formar un matrimonio sin fisuras, pero ahora son la comidilla de Ornaie, una pequeña ciudad de provincias. Han intentado envenenar a François, y todo apunta a que ha sido su propia mujer.

Il breve romanzo più che un poliziesco può essere considerato un dramma introspettivo. Una storia di infelicità coniugale quella di Bébè e François Donge: lei è una donna bella, raffinata, eterea; lui abilissimo uomo d'affari ma grossolano e infedele. La vita apparentemente tranquilla della coppia viene sconvolta improvvisamente: una pozione di arsenico somministrata da Bébè nel caffè del marito e da cui lui viene salvato miracolosamente in ospedale. Un gesto oscuro su cui François si interroga disperatamente fino ad ammettere di non conoscere realmente quali sentimenti alberghino nell'animo della moglie.
E' doloroso il viaggio interiore che egli intraprende e che costituisce per il lettore un viaggio introspettivo descritto con incredibile bravura.
Dal libro nel 1952 Henri Decoin trasse il film con Danielle Darrieux e Jean Gabin ( )

The Donge brothers are entrepreneurs of the unsophisticated sort. Their many businesses involve tanning, pig farming, and cheese making. They marry two sisters and both couples seem, on the surface at least, happy. François and Bébé never fight or even disagree, but one Sunday she slips arsenic into his coffee and calmly awaits the results. François survives, but his life is in pieces. The enigmatic Bébé, the egocentric François, his loyal brother, his delicate son, his gossipy sister-in-law, and his enormous mother-in-law are all wonderfully drawn in Simenon's distinctive manner. Simenon's theme here is a familiar one of his, the absolute failure of people to understand each other. As the story proceeds, Francois is revealed as a self-absorbed lowlife who treated his wife appallingly, engaged in repeated infidelities and neglected their child. Had the abused spouse reached the end of her tether? Does Simenon ultimately reveal the truth about Bébé? I recommend it highly; it’s another splendid “Romans Durs” from the great man.

Rereading is fraught with what-was-I-thinking potential. When I've reread something that didn't live up to the memory, I retain the initial rating. Sentimentality? Maybe. Mostly, it just seems fair.

I loved “La Verite sur Bebe Donge” - it reminded me of Mauriac’s “Therese Desqueyroux”, which is more widely known as a twentieth-century classic. Covers similar themes. ( )

The only mystery in this book is how is it possible for a man to destroy a human being--here, his own wife--without even noticing. Until, that is, she attempts to kill him.

François Donge, a self-made businessman but still very much the son of a rude peasant, married hapless 17-year-old Bébé d'Onneville with no greater conviction than that a serious man must eventually get a wife and start a family, and as his brother Félix was marrying one of two sisters, why not marry the other one himself.

For some bizarre reason he assumes from the start that Bébé accepts because her towering ambition is simply to be married (only coincidentally to him personally), and not because she loves him--rustics like François apparently don't know love exists.

But he does know sex, and that his young wife can't satisfy him because she's too inept and cold (NB: a 17-year-old virgin), as he concludes already on their wedding night. Thus they begin their life together on false premises and unsatisfactorily even from the point of view of a purely physical relationship. While François busies himself with his expanding businesses, exciting travel and numerous sexual adventures, Bébé sinks into almost total social isolation and listlessness. Not even the birth of a son, conceived only after she humbly asks for a child, helps to make them a real family. The boy and his mother, both delicate beings, exist apart from the father bursting with energy but with none to bestow on them.

François' reminiscences after the murder attempt bring back the many touching gestures when Bébé tried to get closer to him, to make them know each other, none of which he understood or bothered about at the time. On the contrary, his behaviour comes into relief as monstrously callous and cruel--and the man wasn't even going for that!

I think that's what Simenon was most interested in showing here--how blind people (notably men) can be to the suffering of others (notably women). We certainly get this message, but I wouldn't call this a successful novel.

While I found Bébé's character and fate sadly plausible, I wasn't convinced by François' change of heart when he realised how mistakenly he judged everything about her from the beginning. I'm not sure an authentic persona of that type could make that realisation in the first place. It doesn't seem possible that anyone who behaved all his life with utter selfishness and disregard for others (it's not just Bébé but all women he treats as if they were subhuman), who's never been in love and scoffs at the idea of love, who apparently doesn't love even his son (and feels compelled to accept him as his own only because the boy has the telltale "Donge nose"), would all of a sudden find himself yearning for his wife and regretting the life they might have had.

It would appear that this "change of heart" was forced more by the narrative structure, Simenon needing a knowing narrator to reconstruct the tale and slowly disperse the enigma around Bébé. Given its intimate nature, what details he chose to illustrate the marital alienation, he had no choice but to use François.

There were parts when I was wondering whether Simenon was being satanically satirical. Not sure how much of a sense of humour he had...

A seasoned lawyer explains the facts of the case to François in the aftermath of his wife Bébé putting arsenic in his coffee: "With poison it's practically impossible to present the case as a crime passionnel. Under the stress of violent emotions a person may snatch up a revolver or an axe. It's difficult to imagine such an emotion persisting long enough for the poison to be procured, for the right moment to present itself, and for all the careful arrangements to be made which poisoning necessitates."

The Truth About Bébé Donge, a Georges Simenon non-Inspector Maigret romans durs, a novel that has been fascinating readers ever since its original publication in 1952. And for good reason - the question looms: Why did Bébé poison her husband? Mr. Simenon brings the full range of his deep understanding of human psychology and the dynamics of marriage to probe this very question.

The opening chapters set the stage. It’s a sunny Sunday morning in August. François and Bébé Donge along with Bébé’s mother and another married couple - François’ brother Félix and Bébé’s sister Jeanne – are enjoying a leisurely breakfast on the lawn of their home near a small French town. Bébé stirs arsenic in her husband’s coffee and all hell breaks loose. François is taken to the hospital by ambulance and not long thereafter, in a calm, cool voice, as if talking about her latest round of interior decorating, Bébé confesses her crime and is hauled off to be locked up at the local police station.

Bébé, oh Bébé, you sweet, attractive lass, what lead you to commit your atrocious crime?

Investigating possible motives can be tricky since the bulk of the novel follows François and dips into his recollections and reflections on life with Bébé. Other than a few brief words on that fateful August morning, what Bébé herself thinks and says only comes out in a voluntary statement submitted to a detective and a dossier read by her defending attorney.

Keeping all this in mind, I have linked my own observations to several of the many clues Georges Simenon sprinkles throughout his tightly constructed tale:

"A pretty face she might have and a perfect figure, but there was no getting away from the fact that in the flesh there was something dull about her. A lack of élan. The very whiteness of her skin was somehow lifeless and uninspiring." ---------- Bébé married François at age 17 and committed her crime at age 27. Latter on in the novel it comes out that Bébé's first exposure to the sexual act was traumatic - Bébé was only 13 when she witnessed her maid having sex with a soldier. Recognizing Bébé's alienation from her own body, perhaps François would have been wise to seek out professional psychological counseling for Bébé or joint marriage counseling. However, I recognize it is easy for me to say in 2018 but this story takes place back in 1952 when seeking psychological help had a stigma attached - seeing a shrink means the patient is crazy. And one can imagine how such news would travel fast in a small town.

"As for her coming into the business . . . No, and once again No! That was no place for a woman who spent two or three hours dolling herself up every morning, who put yolk of egg on her cheeks to keep her complexion, who used every conceivable variety of beauty preparation, and swathed her hands in wet towels to keep them white." ---------- This is François' reaction back when Bébé asks if she can be his secretary at the office (François heads up a factory with his brother). Latter on in the story, François comprehends he didn't fully appreciate Bébé's request signaled how she might have felt her life empty and viewed herself as useless, spending all her days isolated at home, little more than a mother to their frail son Jacques. Again, François is very much a product of the 1950s - a man's place is at work and a wife's place is in the home.

"In spite of an over-imaginative girl who ordered expensive dresses from Paris to moon about in all by herself in a country garden, and who translated English poetry in collaboration with Mimi Lambert." ---------- François never liked having Bébé's friend Mimi Lambert at his house. Once, he spoke sharply to Mimi - in effect, kicking her out. In retrospect, François comprehends this was a grave mistake.

"Promise me that whatever happens you'll always be absolutely frank with me, that, even if it hurts me, you'll always tell me the truth . . . you see, François, it would be ghastly to to live all our lives side by side in an atmosphere of false pretences." ---------- François has had a number of affairs. never hiding any of his relationships from Bébé. Curiously, following her crime, Bébé tells everyone, the detective, her attorney, that she did not act out of jealousy. Are we to believe her? When pressed, Bébé does not provide a clear motive. Her attorney tells François he has never encountered such an example of cynicism in his long career. He also makes it clear to François: "Your wife is absolutely responsible for her actions." In other words, temporary insanity is out of the question.

From the attorney's dossier:
"Q. I'm going to ask you a precise question: if jealousy was not the motive of your crime, was it hatred? . . . Or love?
A: Hatred." ---------- Reading The Truth About Bébé Donge I can't help thinking of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Underground Man when he says: "“And two times two is four is no longer life, gentlemen, but the beginning of death.” My sense is Bébé has something of the Underground Man about her. I highly recommend giving this short novel a careful read so you can judge for yourself.





Georges Simenon, 1903-1989 ( )