Yes, it's what I wantedùwhat I still want. I am so happy when a Negress sings: what summits would I not reach if my own life made the subject of the melody.
The idea is still there, unnameable. It waits, peacefully. Now it seems to say:
"Yes? Is that what you wanted? Well, that's exactly what you've never had (remember you fooled yourself with words, you called the glitter of travel, the love of women, quarrels, and trinkets adventure) and this is what you'll never haveùand no one other than yourself."
But Why? WHY?
Saturday noon:
The Self-Taught Man did not see me come into the reading-room. He was sitting at the end of a table in the back; he had set his book down in front of him but he was not reading. He was smiling at a seedy-looking student who often comes to the library. The student allowed himself to be looked at for a moment, then suddenly stuck his tongue out and made a horrible face. The Self-Taught Man blushed, hurriedly plunged his nose into his book and became absorbed by his reading.
I have reconsidered my thoughts of yesterday. I was completely dry: it made no difference to me whether there had been
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no adventures. I was only curious to know whether there could never he any.
This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.
But you have to choose: live or tell. For example, when I was in Hamburg, with that Erna girl I didn't trust and who was afraid of me, I led a funny sort of life. But I was in the middle of it, I didn't think about it. And then one evening, in a little cafe in San Pauli, she left me to go to the ladies' room. I stayed alone, there was a phonograph playing "Blue Skies." I began to tell myself what had happened since I landed. I told myself, "The third evening, as I was going into a dance hall called ha Grotte Bleue, I noticed a large woman, half seas over. And that woman is the one I am waiting for now, listening to 'Blue Skies,' the woman who is going to come back and sit down at my right and put her arms around my neck." Then I felt violently that I was having an adventure. But Erna came back and sat down beside me, she wound her arms around my neck and I hated her without knowing why. I understand now: one had to begin living again and the adventure was fading out.
Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition. From time to time you make a semi-total: you say: I've been travelling for three years, I've been in Bouville for three years. Neither is there any end: you never leave a woman, a friend, a city in one go. And then everything looks alike: Shanghai, Moscow, Algiers, everything is the same after two weeks. There are momentsùrarelyùwhen you make a landmark, you realize that you're going with a woman, in some messy business. The time of a flash. After that, the procession starts again, you begin to add up hours and days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. April, May, June. 1924, 1925, 1926.
That's living. But everything changes when you tell about life; it's a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. You seem to start at the beginning: "It was a fine autumn eveningin 1922. I was a notary's clerk in Marommes." And in reality you have started at the end. It was there, invisible and present, it is the one which gives to words the pomp and value of a beginning. "I was out walking, I had left the town without realizing it, I was thinking about my money troubles." This sentence, taken simply for what it is, means that the man was absorbed, morose, a hundred leagues from an adventure, exactly in the mood to let things happen without noticing them. But the end is there, transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story. His moroseness, his money troubles are much more precious than ours, they are all gilded by the light of future passions. And the story goes on in the reverse: instants have stopped piling themselves in a lighthearted way one on top of the other, they are snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and each one of them in turn, draws out the preceding instant: "It was night, the street was deserted." The phrase is cast out negligently, it seems superfluous; but we do not let ourselves be caught and we put it aside: this is a piece of information whose value we shall subsequently appreciate. And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in a night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice.
I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.
Sunday:
I had forgotten that this morning was Sunday. I went out and walked along the streets as usual. I had taken along Eugenie Grandet. Then, suddenly, when opening the gate of the public park I got the impression that something was signalling to me. The park was bare and deserted. But . . . how can I explain?
It didn't have its usual look, it smiled at me. I leaned against the railing for a moment then suddenly realized it was Sunday. It was thereùon the trees, on the grass, like a faint smile. It couldn't be described, you would have had to repeat very quickly: "This is a public park, this is winter, this is Sunday morning."
I let go of the railing, turned back towards the houses and streets of the town and half-aloud I murmured, "It's Sunday."
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It's Sunday: behind the docks, along the seacoast, near the freight station, all around the city there are empty warehouses and motionless machines in the darkness. In all the houses, men are shaving behind their windows; their heads are thrown back, sometimes they stare at the looking glass, sometimes at the sky to see whether it's going to be a fine day. The brothels are opening to their first customers, rustics and soldiers. In the churches, in the light of candles, a man is drinking wine in the sight of kneeling women. In all the suburbs, between the interminable walls of factories, long black processions have started walking, they are slowly advancing towards the centre of the town. To receive them, the streets have taken on the look they have when disturbance is expected, all the stores, except the ones on the Rue Tournebride, have lowered their iron shutters. Soon, silently, these black columns are going to invade the death-shamming streets: first the railroad workers from Tourville and their wives who work in the Saint-Symphorin soap factories, then the little bourgeois from Jouxtebouville, then the workers from the Pinot weaving mills, then all the odd jobbers from the Saint-Maxence quarter; the men from Thierache will arrive last on the eleven o'clock trolley. Soon the Sunday crowd will be born, between bolted shops and closed doors.
A clock strikes half-past ten and I start on my way: Sundays, at this hour, you can see a fine show in Bouville, but you must not come too late after High Mass.
The little Rue Josephin-Soulary is dead, it smells of a cellar. But, as on every Sunday, it is filled with a sumptuous noise, a noise like a tide. I turn into the Rue de President-Chamart where the houses have four storeys with long white Venetian blinds. This street of notaries is entirely filled by the voluminous clamour of Sunday. The noise increases in the Passage Gillet and I recognize it: it is a noise which men make. Then suddenly, on the left, comes an explosion, of light and sound: here is the Rue Tournebride, all I have to do is take my place among my fellows and watch them raising their hats to each other.
Sixty years ago no one could have forseen the miraculous destiny of the Rue Tournebride, which the inhabitants of Bouville today call the Little Prado. I saw a map dated 1847 on which the street was not even mentioned. At that time it must have been a dark, stinking bowel, with a trench between the paving stones in which fishes' heads and entrails were stacked. But, at the end
!
f 1873, the Assemblee Nationale declared the construction of achurch on the slope of Montmartre to be of public utility. A few months later, the mayor's wife had a vision: Sainte Cecile, her patron saint, came to remonstrate with her. Was it tolerable for the elite to soil themselves every Sunday going to Saint-Rene or Saint-Claudien to hear mass with shopkeepers? Hadn't the Assemblee Nationale set an example? Bouville now had, thanks to the protection of Heaven, a first-class financial position; wouldn't it be fitting to build a church wherein to give thanks to the Lord?
These visions were accepted: the city council held a historic meeting and the bishop agreed to organize a subscription. All that was left was the choice of locality. The old families of businessmen and shipowners were of the opinion that the building should be constructed on the summit of the Coteau Vert where they lived, "so that Saint Cecile could watch over Bouville as the Sacre-Coeur-de-Jesus over Paris." The nouveau-riche gentlemen of the Boulevard Maritime, of which there were only a few, shook their heads: they would give all that was needed but the church would have to be built on the Place Marignan; if they were going to pay for a church they expected to be able to use it; they were not reluctant to make their power felt by the higher bourgeoisie who considered them parvenus. The bishop suggested a compromise: the church was built halfway between the Coteau Vert and the Boulevard Maritime, on the Place de la Halle-aux-Morues which was baptised Place Sainte-Cecile-de-la-Mer. This monstrous edifice, completed in 1887, cost no less than fourteen million francs.
The Rue Tournebride, wide but dirty and of ill-repute, had to be entirely rebuilt and its inhabitants firmly pushed back behind the Place Saint-Cecile; the Little Prado becameùespecially on Sunday morningsùthe meeting place of elegant and distinguished people. Fine shops opened one by one on the passage of the elite. They stayed open Easter Monday, all Christmas Night, and every Sunday until noon. Next to Julien, the pork butcher, renowned for his pates chauds, Foulon, the pastry cook exhibits his famous specialties, conical petits-fours made of mauve butter, topped by a sugar violet. In the window of Dupaty's library you can see the latest books published by Plon, a few technical works such as a theory of navigation or a treatise on sails and sailing, an enormous illustrated history of Bouville and elegantly appointed editions de luxe: Koenigsmark bound in blue leather, the Livre de mes Fils by Paul Doumer, bound in tan leather with
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purple flowers. Ghislaine (Haute Couture, Parisian Models) separates Piegeois the florist from Paquin, the antique dealer. Gustave, the hair dresser, who employs four manicurists, occupies the second floor of an entirely new yellow painted building.
Two years ago, at the corner of the Impasse des Moulins-Gemeaux and the Rue Tournebride, an impudent little shop still advertised for the Tu-Pu-Nez insecticide. It had flourished in the time when codfish were hawked in the Place Sainte-Cecile; it was a hundred years old. The windows were rarely washed: it required a great effort to distinguish, through dust and mist, a crowd of tiny wax figures decked out in orange doublets, representing rats and mice. These animals were disembarking from a high-decked ship, leaning on sticks; barely had they touched the ground when a peasant girl, attractively dressed but filthy and black with dirt, put them all to flight by sprinkling them with Tu-Pu-Nez. I liked this shop very much, it had a cynical and obstinate look, it insolently recalled the rights of dirt and vermin, only two paces from the most costly church in France.
The old herborist died last year and her nephew sold the house. It was enough to tear down a few walls: it is now a small lecture hall, "La Bonbonniere." Last year Henry Bordeaux gave a talk on Alpinism there.
You must not be in a hurry in the Rue Tournebride: the families walk slowly. Sometimes you move up a step because one family has turned into Foulon's or Piegeois'. But, at other times, you must stop and mark time because two families, one going up the street, the other coming down, have met and have solidly clasped hands. I go forward slowly. I stand a whole head above both columns and I see hats, a sea of hats. Most of them are black and hard. From time to time you see one fly off at the end of an arm and you catch the soft glint of a skull; then, after a few instants of heavy flight, it returns. At 16 Rue Tournebride, Ur-bain, the hatter, specializing in forage caps, has hung up as a symbol, an immense, red archbishop's hat whose gold tassels hang six feet from the ground.
A halt: a group has collected just under the tassels. My neighbour waits impatiently, his arms dangling: this little old man, pale and fragile as porcelainùI think he must be Cornerù president of the Chamber of Commerce. It seems he is intimidating because he never speaks. He lives on the summit of the Coteau Vert, in a great brick house whose windows are always wide open. It's over: the group has broken up. Another group
43starts forming but it takes up less space: barely formed, it is pushed against Ghislaine's window front. The column does not even stop: it hardly makes a move to step aside; we are walking in front of six people who hold hands: "Bonjour, Monsieur, bonjour cher Monsieur, comment allez-vous? Do put your hat on again, you'll catch cold; Thank you, Madame, it isn't very warm out, is it? My dear, let me present Doctor Lefrancois; Doctor, I am very glad to make your acquaintance, my husband always speaks of Doctor Lefrancois who took such care of him, but do put your hat on, Doctor, you'll catch cold. But a doctor would get well quickly; Alas! Madame, doctors are the least well looked after; the Doctor is a remarkable musician. Really, Doctor? But I never knew, you play the violin? The Doctor is very gifted."