The Age of Reason (40 page)

‘Good afternoon,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ve got someone...’

Sarah pushed him amicably aside, and craned her head over his shoulder.

‘Who is it?’ she asked, with greedy curiosity. ‘Oh, it’s Ivich Serguine. How are you?’

Ivich got up and made a sort of bow. She looked rather put out. So, indeed, did Sarah. Ivich was the only person whom Sarah could not stand.

‘How dreadfully thin you are,’ said Sarah. ‘I’m sure you aren’t eating enough, you don’t look after yourself.’

Mathieu confronted Sarah and eyed her fixedly. Sarah began to laugh: ‘There’s Mathieu looking very sternly at me,’ she said with a lively laugh. ‘He won’t have me talk to you about diet.’ She turned towards Mathieu. ‘I came back late,’ she said. ‘Waldmann was not to be found anywhere. He hasn’t been three weeks in Paris, and he’s already involved in all sorts of shady affairs. It was six o’clock before I could get hold of him.’

‘How kind you are, Sarah — I’m truly grateful,’ said Mathieu. And he added briskly: ‘But we’ll talk about all that later on. Will you have a cup of tea?’

‘Indeed, no. I can’t even sit down,’ she said: ‘I must dash along to the Spanish Bookshop, they want to see me urgently, there’s a friend of Gomez who has just arrived in Paris.’

‘Who is it?’ asked Mathieu, by way of gaining time.

‘I don’t yet know. I was merely told — a friend of Gomez. He comes from Madrid.’

She gazed affectionately at Mathieu. There was a look of agonized kindness in her eyes.

‘My poor Mathieu, I’ve got some bad news for you: he refuses.’

‘Hm!’ But all the same Mathieu did bring himself to say: ‘You would like a word with me in private, no doubt?’

He frowned meaningly. But Sarah was not looking at him: ‘Oh, it’s hardly worth while,’ she said gloomily. ‘I have almost nothing to tell you.’ And she added in a voice that vibrated with mystery: ‘I pressed him as hard as I could. Nothing doing. The person in question must be at his place tomorrow morning, with the money.’

‘All right. Well, it can’t be helped: don’t let’s talk about it any more,’ said Mathieu briskly.

He stressed the last words, but Sarah was anxious to justify herself, and said: ‘I did everything I could — I implored him to agree. He said, “Is she a Jewess?” I said no. Then he said: "I don’t give credit. If she wants my help, she must pay for it. Otherwise, there are plenty of clinics in Paris."’

Mathieu heard the sofa creak behind his back. Sarah continued: ‘He said: “I will never give them credit, they made us suffer too much.” And it’s true, you know, I can almost understand his attitude. He spoke of the Jews in Vienna, and the concentration camps. I wouldn’t believe it...’ Her voice almost failed her. ‘They were martyred.’

She paused, and a heavy silence followed. Then she continued, shaking her head: ‘So what will you do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You are not thinking of...’

‘Yes,’ said Mathieu gloomily: ‘I imagine it will end in that’

‘My dear Mathieu,’ said Sarah with emotion.

He eyed her coldly, and she, embarrassed, said no more: he observed something like a gleam of awareness kindle in her eyes.

‘Very well, then,’ she said, after a moment or two: ‘I must run away. Ring me up tomorrow morning without fail, I shall want to know.’

‘I will,’ said Mathieu. ‘Good-bye, Sarah.’

‘Good-bye, Ivich darling,’ cried Sarah from the door.

‘Good-bye, Madame,’ said Ivich.

When Sarah had gone, Mathieu went on pacing up and down the room. He was cold.

‘That good creature,’ he said with a laugh, ‘is a hurricane. She comes in like a squall of wind, flings everything on to the floor, and then whirls out again.’

Ivich said nothing. Mathieu knew she would not answer. He came and sat down beside her and said, with averted eyes: ‘Ivich, I’m going to marry Marcelle.’

There was a further silence. Mathieu looked at the heavy green curtains that masked the window. He was tired. He bent his head, and went on, by way of explanation: ‘She told me two days ago that she was pregnant.’

The words emerged with difficulty: he did not venture to turn towards Ivich, but he knew she was looking at him.

‘I wonder why you tell me,’ said she, in a frozen voice. ‘These are your affairs.’

Mathieu shrugged his shoulders, and said: ‘You knew she was...’

‘Your mistress?’ said Ivich disdainfully. ‘I had better tell you that I don’t pay much attention to that sort of thing.’

She hesitated, and then said, with a listless air: ‘I don’t see why you should assume that devastated look. If you marry her, it’s presumably because you want to. Otherwise, from what I hear, there are all sorts of ways...’

‘I haven’t any money,’ said Mathieu. ‘I have tried to raise some everywhere...’

‘So that’s why you asked Boris to borrow four thousand francs from Lola?’

‘Ah! You know? I didn’t... weIl, yes, if you like, it was for that.’

Ivich said in a toneless voice: ‘How sordid.’

‘Yes.’

‘Anyway, it doesn’t concern me,’ said Ivich. ‘You ought to know what you’re about.’

She drank up her tea and said: ‘What time is it?’

‘A quarter to nine.’

‘Is it dark?’

Mathieu went to the window and lifted the curtain. A murky light still filtered through the shutters., ‘Not quite.’

‘Oh well, never mind,’ said Ivich, getting up: ‘I shall go all the same. I’ve got all my packing to do,’ she said in a tone of lamentation.

‘Well — good-bye,’ said Mathieu.

He felt no desire to detain her.

‘Good-bye.’

‘I shall see you again in October?’

It came out unawares. Ivich gave a violent start.

‘In October!’ she said with flashing eyes. ‘In October! No, indeed!’

She began to laugh. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but you look so odd. I never really thought of taking your money: you will need all you have to start housekeeping.’

‘Ivich!’ said Mathieu, grasping her arm.

Ivich uttered a cry, and shook his hand off.

‘Let me go,’ she said. ‘Don’t touch me.’

Mathieu dropped his arms. He felt a desperate anger rising up within him.

‘I suspected something of the kind,’ Ivich went on breathlessly. ‘Yesterday morning... when you had the impertinence to touch me... I said to myself — that’s the way a married man behaves.’

‘That’s enough,’ said Mathieu roughly. ‘You needn’t say any more. I understand.’

There she stood, face to face with him, red with anger, an insolent smile upon her lips: he was afraid of himself. He thrust her aside, flung himself out of the flat, and slammed the front door behind him.

You know not how to love, you know not how.
In vain I love you so.

T
HE
Trois Mousquetaires café gleamed through the faltering dusk with all its lights ablaze. A desultory crowd had assembled on the terrace outside: soon the luminous network of the night would be stretched above Paris: these people were waiting for the night, listening to the band, and looking well content as they gathered gratefully round this first red glimmer of the night to come. Mathieu kept well away from this lyric crowd: the charm of the evening was not for him.

You know not how to love, you know not how.
And you will never know.

A long straight street. Behind him, in a green room, a little malevolent consciousness obdurately repulsed him. Before him, in a pink room, a motionless woman awaited him with a smile of hope. In an hour’s time he would walk softly into that pink room, and gradually become enmeshed by all the gentle hope, the gratitude, and love that he would find there. Men have drowned themselves for far less than that.

‘Look out, you bloody fool!’

Mathieu flung himself forward to avoid the car: he tripped against the pavement, and found himself on the ground. He had fallen on his hands.

‘God damn it all!’

He got up, with smarting palms. Gravely he contemplated his muddy hands: the right one was quite black and bruised, the left was aching badly: his bandage was spattered with mud. ‘That’s the last straw,’ he murmured solemnly. ‘That’s the last straw.’ He pulled out his pocket-handkerchief, wetted it in his mouth, and rubbed the palms of his hands with a kind of odd solicitude: he felt like shedding tears. There followed a moment of suspense, in which he eyed himself with amazement. Then he burst out laughing. He laughed at himself, at Marcelle, at Ivich, at his own ridiculous clumsiness, his life, his shabby passions: he recalled his ancient hopes, and laughed at them too, because they had culminated in
this
, in this solemn personage who had been on the point of shedding tears because he had fallen down; he looked at himself with no sort of shame, with a cold intense amusement, and he thought: ‘To think I used to take myself seriously.’ The laughter stopped, after a few final gasps: there was no one left to laugh.

Empty space. The body started off again, heavy and hot, with tremors and flushes of anger assailing the throat and stomach. But no one inhabited that body now. The streets were emptied as though their contents had been poured down a sink: something that a while ago had filled them had been swallowed up. The usual objects were still there, intact, but they had all become disrupted, they depended from the sky like enormous stalactites, or towered upwards like fantastic dolmens. All their usual little appeals, their shrill cicada-chirpings, had vanished into thin air, and were silent. A man’s future had once challenged them, and they met it with a scatter of diverse temptations. That future was dead.

The body turned to the right, and plunged into a luminous haze at the far end of a noisome cleft, between ice-blocks streaked by intermittent flashes. Dark masses creaked as they crawled past. At the level of the eyes, swung a line of furry flowers. Between these flowers, in the depths of the crevasse, glided a transparency and eyed itself with frozen fury.

‘I’ll go and get it!’ The world resumed its shape — a noisy, bustling world, of cars and people and shop-windows. Mathieu discovered himself in the middle of the Rue du Départ. But it was no longer the same world, nor quite the same Mathieu. At the far end of the world, beyond the buildings and the streets, there was a closed door. He searched in his pocket-book and produced a key. Yonder the closed door, here — the small flat key: these were the sole objects in this world: between them, nothing but a medley of obstacles and distances. ‘In one hour. There’s time for me to walk.’ One hour; just time to get to the—door and open it: beyond that hour there was nothing. Mathieu walked with a measured stride, inwardly at peace, intent upon evil and yet unperturbed. ‘Suppose Lola had stayed in bed?’ He put the key back into his pocket and said: ‘Oh well, it can’t be helped: I should take the money just the same.’

The lamp shone dimly. Near the attic window, between the photographs of Marlene Dietrich and of Robert Taylor, hung an advertisement-calendar bearing a small and rather tarnished mirror. Daniel approached it, and bending down a little, set about retying the knot of his necktie: he was in a hurry to get himself dressed. In the mirror, behind him, almost effaced by the half-darkness and the white discolorations on the mirror, he could see Ralph’s haggard, harsh profile, and his hands began to tremble: he longed to squeeze that thin neck with its protuberant Adam’s apple, and feel it crack beneath his fingers. Ralph turned his head towards the glass, he did not know that Daniel was looking at him, and eyed him with a queer expression. ‘He’s looking positively murderous,’ thought Daniel with a shiver — almost, in fact, almost a shiver of enjoyment — ‘he’s hurt in his little masculine pride, he hates me.’ He took time over knotting his tie. Ralph was still looking at him, and Daniel was enjoying the hatred that united them, a rejuvenated hatred, that seemed to date back twenty years, a veritable possession: he felt the purer for it. ‘One day a fellow like that will come and knock me out from behind.’ The youthful face would expand in the mirror, and that would be the end — the infamous death that was his due. He swung suddenly round, Ralph promptly lowered his eyes. The room was a furnace.

‘You haven’t got a towel?’

Daniel’s hands were moist.

‘There may be one in the water-jug.’

In the water-jug there was in fact a dirty towel. Daniel wiped his hands carefully.

‘There has never been any water in that water-jug. You don’t appear to wash much, either of you.’

‘We wash under the tap in the passage,’ said Ralph in a surly tone. After a pause, he added: ‘It’s more convenient.’

He slipped on his shoes, sitting on the edge of the truckle bedstead, his torso bent, and his right knee raised. Daniel eyed the slim back, and the young muscular arms protruding from the short-sleeved Lacoste shirt: he has charm, he thought dispassionately. But he loathed that very charm. In an instant he would be outside, and all this would be over. But he knew what awaited him outside: just as he was putting on his jacket he hesitated: his shoulders and chest were bathed in sweat, he realized with annoyance that the weight of the coat would make his linen shirt stick to his damp flesh.

‘It’s disgustingly hot in here,’ he said to Ralph.

‘We’re right under the roof.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Nine o’clock: just struck.’

Ten hours to kill before daylight. He could not go to bed after that sort of episode, it always upset him much more if he did. Ralph looked up: ‘I wanted to ask you, Monsieur Lalique... was it you who advised Bobby to go back to his chemist?’

‘Advised? No. I told him he was a fool to have walked out on him.’

‘Aha! That’s not the same thing. He came and told me this morning that he was going to apologize, that it was you who wanted him to, but he didn’t look as though he were telling the truth.’

‘I don’t want him to do anything,’ said Daniel: ‘and I certainly didn’t tell him to apologize.’

They both smiled contemptuously. Daniel was on the point of putting on his jacket, but his heart failed him.

‘I said — do as you like,’ said Ralph, bending down again. ‘It’s not my business. If that’s what M. Lalique advised... but I see what it is now.’