The Mandarins

Scriassine’s face remained grave. ‘Do you ever horrify yourself?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But I’m not very introspective,’ I added with a smile.

‘That’s why you’re so relaxing,’ Scriassine said. ‘The moment I met you I found you relaxing. You gave the impression of being a well-brought-up young girl who always listens quietly while the grown-ups are talking.’

‘I have an eighteen-year-old daughter, you know.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything. Besides, I find young girls insufferable. But a woman who looks like a young girl – that I find charming!’ He examined me very closely. ‘It’s a funny thing. The women in the crowd you go around with are all quite free. But you – one wonders if you’ve ever deceived your husband.’

‘Deceived! What a horrid word! Robert and I are completely free to do as we please; we hide nothing from each other.’

‘But have you ever made use of that freedom?’

‘Occasionally,’ I said. I finished my drink, trying to conceal my embarrasment. There really weren’t very many occasions; in that respect, I was quite different from Robert. Picking up a good-looking girl in a bar and spending an hour with her seemed perfectly normal to him. As for me, I could never have accepted a man for a lover if I didn’t feel I could become friends with him – and my requirements for friendship are quite exacting. I had lived the last five years in chastity, with no regrets, and I believed I would go on that way forever. It seemed natural to me for my life as a woman to be ended; there were so many things that had ended, forever …

Scriassine silently studied me for a moment and then said, ‘In any case, I’ll bet there haven’t been many men in your life.’

‘That’s true,’ I replied.

‘Why not?’

‘I suppose the right ones just didn’t come along.’

‘If the right ones didn’t come along, that’s simply because you never looked very hard.’

‘Everyone knows me as Dubreuilh’s wife, or as Doctor Anne Dubreuilh. Both inspire nothing but respect.’

‘Well, I for one don’t feel any special respect for you,’ Scriassine said, smiling.

There was a brief silence and then I asked, ‘Why should a woman who’s free to do as she pleases sleep with everyone on earth?’

He looked at me severely. ‘If a man, a man for whom you might have a little liking, asked you straight out to spend the night with him, would you do it?’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On him, on me, on the circumstances.’

‘Let’s suppose that I asked you now. What then?’

‘I don’t know.’

I had seen it coming ever since we broached the subject but, nevertheless I was taken by surprise.

‘I am asking you. Which is it – yes or no?’

‘You’re going a little too fast,’ I said.

‘I hate a lot of beating around the bush. Paying court to a woman is degrading for both oneself and for the woman. I don’t suppose you go for all that sentimental nonsense, either.’

‘No, but I like to think things over before I make a decision.’

‘Think it over then.’

He ordered two more whiskies. No, I had no desire to sleep with him, or with any other man. My body had too long been steeped in a sort of selfish torpor. What perverse turn of mind could have made me want to disturb its repose? Besides, it seemed impossible. It always amazed me that Nadine could give herself so easily to total strangers. Between my solitary flesh and the solitary man seated beside me drinking his whisky, not the slightest bond existed. To think of myself naked in his naked arms was as incongruous as imagining him embracing my old mother.

‘Let’s wait and see how the evening turns out,’ I said.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he replied. ‘How can you expect us to talk politics or psychology with that question bothering us? You must know already what you’re going to decide. Tell me now.’

His impatience seemed to assure me that, after all, I wasn’t my old mother. Since he desired me, I was forced to believe I was desirable, if only for an hour. Nadine claimed she was as indifferent about getting into bed as sitting down at table. Maybe she had the right idea. She accused me of approaching life with white kid gloves. Was it true? What would happen if for once I took off my gloves? If I didn’t take them off tonight, would I ever? Reason said to me, ‘My life is over.’ But against all reason, I still had a good many years to kill.

‘All right,’ I said abruptly, ‘the answer is yes.’

‘Ah! now there’s a good answer,’ he said in the encouraging voice of a doctor or professor. He wanted to take my hand, but I declined that reward.

‘I’d like a cup of coffee. I’m afraid I’ve had a little too much to drink.’

‘An American woman would ask for another whisky,’ he said with a smile. ‘But you’re right; it’d be a damn shame if either of us were under the weather.’

He ordered two coffees which we drank in embarrassed silence. I had said yes mainly because I had come to feel a certain affection for him, because of the precarious intimacy he had created between us. But now that yes was beginning to chill my affection.

No sooner had we emptied our cups than he said, ‘Let’s go up to my room.’

‘Right away?’

‘Why not? It’s obvious we have nothing more to say to each other.’

I could have wished for more time to get accustomed to my decision; I had hoped our pact would generate, little by little, a feeling of complicity. But as a matter of fact, I really didn’t have anything more to say.

Suitcases were scattered everywhere about the room. There were two brass beds, one of which was covered with clothing and papers, and on a round coffee table stood several empty champagne bottles. He took me in his arms and I felt a hard yet gentle mouth pressing against my lips. Yes, it was possible, it was easy. Something was happening to me, something different. I closed my eyes and stepped into a dream as lifelike as reality itself, a dream from which I felt I would awaken at dawn, carefree and lighthearted. And then I heard his voice: ‘The little girl seems frightened.’ Those words, which hardly had anything to do with me, rudely brought me out of my dream. I pushed myself free.

‘Wait a moment,’ I said.

I went into the bathroom and hastily freshened up, pushing aside all thoughts; it was too late now to think. He joined me in bed before there was time for any questions to arise in me. I clung tightly to him; at that moment he was my only hope.

At last he said commandingly, ‘Open your eyes.’

I raised my eyelids, but they weighed heavily and closed quickly against the light which hurt them. ‘Open your eyes,’ he was saying. ‘It’s just you and I.’ He was right; I didn’t really want to escape, but first I had to grow accustomed to that strange presence. Becoming aware of my flesh, seeing his unfamiliar face, and under his gaze losing myself within myself – it was too much all at once. But since he insisted, I opened my eyes and I looked at him. I looked at him and was halted midway in my inner turmoil, in a region without light and without darkness, where I was neither body nor spirit. He threw off the sheet, and at the same moment it occurred to me that the room was poorly heated and that I no longer had the belly of a young girl. The mutilated flower burst suddenly into bloom, and lost its petals, while he muttered words to himself, for himself, words I tried not to hear. But I … I had lost interest. He came back close to me and for a moment the warmth of his body aroused me again.

‘How could I ever feel any tenderness for this man?’ I thought. There was a discouraging hostility in his eyes, but I didn’t feel guilty towards him, not even by omission.

‘Don’t worry so much about me. Just let me …’

‘You’re not really cold,’ he said angrily. ‘You’re resisting with your head. But I’ll force you …’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No …’

It would have been too difficult to explain my feeling. There was a look of hate in his eyes and I was ashamed to have let myself be taken in by the mirage of carnal pleasure. A man, I discovered, isn’t a Turkish bath.

‘You don’t want to!’ he was saying. ‘You don’t want to! Stubborn mule!’ He struck me lightly on the chin; I was too weary to escape into anger. I began to tremble. A beating fist, thousands of fists … ‘Violence is everywhere,’ I thought. I trembled and tears began running down my cheeks.

Now, he was kissing my eyes, murmuring, ‘I’m drinking your tears,’ and a conquering tenderness appeared in his face, a childlike tenderness, and I had pity as much for him as for myself. Both of us were equally lost, equally disillusioned. I smoothed his hair; I asked, ‘Why do you hate me?’

‘It has to be,’ he said regretfully. ‘It just has to be.’

‘But I don’t hate you, you know. In fact I like being in your arms.’

‘Do you really mean that?’

‘Yes, I do.’

In a sense I did mean it; something was happening. True, it had missed the mark, was sad, ridiculous even, but it was real.

‘It’s been a strange night,’ I said with a smile. ‘I’ve never spent a night like this before.’

‘Never? Not even with younger men? You’re not lying to me, are you?’

The words had lied for me. I endorsed their lie. ‘Never.’

He crushed me ardently against him. ‘All right?’

I knew my pleasure found no echo in his heart, and if I impatiently awaited his it was only to be done with it. And yet I had been subdued, was willing to sigh, to moan. But not very convincingly, I imagine.

He, too, had been subdued, for he didn’t insist. Almost immediately, he fell asleep against me; I also dozed off. The weight of his arm across my chest awakened me.

‘You’re here! Thank God!’ he exclaimed, opening his eyes. ‘I was having a nightmare; I always have nightmares.’ He seemed to be speaking from very far off, from the darkest depths of night. ‘Don’t you have a place where you can hide me?’

‘Hide you?’

‘Yes. It would be so wonderful to just disappear. Can’t we disappear for a few days?’

‘I have no place. And I can’t get away myself.’

‘What a shame!’ he said, and then asked, ‘Don’t you ever have nightmares?’

‘Not very often.’

‘I envy you! I always have someone near me at night.’

‘I have to leave soon, you know,’ I said.

‘Not right away. Don’t go. Don’t leave me!’ He grabbed me by the shoulders. I was a life preserver. But in what shipwreck?

‘I’ll wait till you fall asleep,’ I said. ‘Would you like to meet me again tomorrow?’

‘Yes, certainly. I’ll be at the café next door to your place at noon. Is that all right with you?’

‘Fine. Now try to sleep quietly.’

As soon as his breathing grew heavy, I slipped out of bed. It was hard for me to tear myself from the night which clung so tenaciously to my skin. But I didn’t want to arouse Nadine’s suspicions. Each of us had her own way of duping the other: she told me everything; I told her nothing. As I stood before the mirror, transforming my face into a mask of decency, I realized Nadine had been one of the main reasons for my decision to say yes to Scriassine, and I couldn’t help myself from holding it against her. Yet I really hadn’t the least regret for what I had done. You learn so many things about a man when you’re in bed with him, much more than when you have him maunder for weeks on a couch. Only I was far too vulnerable for this sort of experiment.

I was kept very busy all morning. Sézenac didn’t come, but I had quite a few other patients. I had only a vague impression of Scriassine, and I needed to see him again. Our night together was resting heavily on my heart, incomplete, absurd. I hoped that in talking to him we would be able to bring it to a conclusion, to save it perhaps. I was the first to arrive at the café, a small place, painted bright red, with highly polished tables. I had often bought cigarettes there, but I had never sat down. Couples were sitting in booths and talking quietly. A waiter appeared and I ordered a glass of ersatz port. I felt as if I were in a strange city; I no longer seemed to know what I was waiting for. Suddenly Scriassine burst into the café and walked hurriedly over to my table.

‘Sorry I’m late. I had a dozen appointments this morning.’

‘That makes it all the nicer of you to have come.’

He smiled at me. ‘Sleep well?’

‘Very well.’

He, too, ordered a glass of ersatz port and then leaned towards me. There was no longer any trace of hostility in his face. ‘I’d like to ask you a question.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Why did you agree so readily to go up to my room with me?’

I smiled. ‘I suppose it’s because I like you a little,’ I replied.

‘You weren’t drunk?’

‘Not at all.’

‘And you weren’t sorry afterwards?’

‘No.’

He hesitated. I gathered he was anxious to obtain a detailed commentary for his most intimate catalogue. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to know. You said you’d never spent a night like that before. Is that true?’

‘Yes and no,’ I answered with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, disappointed. ‘It’s never really true.’

‘It’s true at the moment; less so the next day.’

He swallowed the sticky wine in a single gulp.

‘You know what chilled me?’ I said. ‘There were moments when you looked so terribly hostile.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘That couldn’t be helped.’

‘Why? The struggle between the sexes?’

‘We’re not on the same side. I mean, politically.’

For a moment I was stupefied. ‘But politics has so little place in my life!’

‘Indifference is also a stand,’ he said sharply. ‘You see, in politics if you’re not completely with me you’re very far from me.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have asked me to go up to your room,’ I said reproachfully.

A sly smile wrinkled his eyes. ‘If I really want a woman, it’s all the same to me whether she agrees with my politics or not. I wouldn’t even have any qualms about sleeping with a fascist.’

‘But apparently it isn’t all the same to you, since you were hostile.’

He smiled again. ‘In bed, it’s not bad to hate each other a little.’

‘That’s horrible,’ I said, staring at him. ‘You’re quite an introvert, aren’t you? You can pity people and feel remorse for them, but I doubt if you could ever really like anyone.’

‘Ah! so you’re the one who’s doing the analysing today,’ he said. ‘Go on; I love being analysed.’

In his eyes I saw the same look of maniacal greed I had noticed the night before when he looked down at my naked body. I could not have tolerated it except in a child or a sick person.

‘You believe loneliness can be cured by force; but in making love, there’s no greater blunder.’

He got the point. ‘What you’re saying is that last night was a failure. Is that right?’

‘More or less.’

‘Would you be willing to begin all over again?’

I hesitated. ‘Yes. I don’t like to stop at a failure.’

His face hardened. ‘That’s a pretty poor reason,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘You don’t make love with your head.’

That was precisely my opinion. If his words and desires had wounded me, it was because they came from his head. ‘I think both of us do things too much with our heads,’ I said.

‘In that case, I suppose it’d be better if we didn’t try again,’ he said.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

Yes, a second failure would have been even more disastrous than the first, and a happy outcome was inconceivable. We had absolutely no love at all for each other. Even talk was useless; there had been nothing worth saving and the whole affair, in any case, didn’t lend itself to a conclusion. We politely exchanged a few idle words and then I went home.

I hold nothing against him, and I hold hardly anything against myself. Besides, as Robert told me immediately, the whole thing was quite unimportant – nothing but a distasteful remembrance lingering in our minds and concerning no one but ourselves. But when I went up to my room, I promised myself I would never again attempt to remove my kid gloves. ‘It’s too late,’ I murmured, looking into the mirror. ‘My gloves are grafted to my flesh now; they’d have to skin me alive to get them off.’ No, it wasn’t only Scriassine’s fault that things turned out the way they did; it was my fault too. I had slept with him out of curiosity, out of defiance, out of weariness, to prove to myself God only knows what. Well, whatever it was, I certainly proved the contrary. I thought casually that my life might have been different. I might have dressed more elegantly, gone out more often, known the little pleasures of vanity or the burning fevers of the senses. But it was too late. And then all at once I understood why my past sometimes seemed to me to be someone else’s. Because now I am someone else, a woman of thirty-nine, a woman who’s aware of her age!

‘Thirty-nine years!’ I said aloud. Before the war I was too young for the years to have weighed upon me. And then for five years, I forgot myself completely. And now I’ve found myself again, only to learn that I’m condemned. Old age is awaiting me; there’s no escaping it. Even now I can see its beginnings in the depths of the mirror. Oh, I’m still a woman, I still bleed every month. Nothing’s really changed, except that now I know. I ran my fingers through my hair. Those white streaks are no longer a curiosity, a sign; they’re the beginning. In a few years, my head will be the colour of my bones. My face still seems smooth and firm, but overnight the mask will melt, laying bare the rheumy eyes of an old woman. Each year the seasons repeat themselves; wounds are healed. But there’s no way in the world to halt the infirmities of age. ‘There isn’t even any time left to worry about it,’ I thought, turning away from my reflection. ‘It’s even too late for regrets. There’s nothing left to do but to keep going.’

CHAPTER THREE

Nadine went to meet Henri several evenings in a row at the offices of the newspaper. One night, in fact, they even took a room in a hotel again, but it didn’t amount to much. For Nadine, making love was clearly a tedious occupation and Henri, too, tired quickly of it. But he enjoyed going out with her, watching her eat, hearing her laugh, talking to her. She was blind to a great many things, but she reacted strongly to those she did see – and without ever cheating. He was convinced she would make a pleasant travelling companion, was touched by her eagerness. Each time she saw him she would ask, ‘Did you talk to her about it yet?’ And he would answer, ‘No, not yet.’ She would lower her head in such utter desolation that it made him feel guilty, made him feel as if he were depriving her of all those things she had for so long gone without: sun, plenty of food, a real trip. Since he had decided in any case to break off with Paula, why not let Nadine profit from it? Besides, it would be a lot better for Paula’s sake if he explained things to her before leaving, rather than let her ruin herself with hope while he was gone. When he was away from her, he felt he was in the right; he had rarely acted falsely towards her and she was only lying to herself when she pretended to believe in the resurrection of a dead and buried past. But when he was with her, it often occurred to him that he, too, might be at fault. ‘Am I a bastard for not loving her any more?’ he would ask himself, watching her come and go in the apartment. ‘Or was I wrong ever to love her in the first place?’

He had been at the Dôme with Julien and Louis and seated at the next table, making a great show of reading The Accident, was a woman of extraordinary beauty, dressed from head to foot in mauve. She had placed her long violet gloves on the table and, as Henri arose to leave, he remarked, ‘What beautiful gloves!’

‘Do you like them? Take them, they’re yours.’

‘And just what, may I ask, would I do with them?’

‘You can keep them as a souvenir of our first meeting.’

They exchanged a soft, lingering look. A few hours later he was holding her naked body in his arms and saying, ‘You’re too beautiful, much too beautiful.’ No, he really couldn’t blame himself. How could he have helped but be captivated by Paula’s beauty, by her voice, by the mystery of her words, by the distant wisdom in her smile? She was slightly older than he, knew many things of which he was ignorant and which seemed at that time much more important to him than the bigger things. What he admired in her above all was her complete disdain for worldly goods; she soared in some supernatural region, and he despaired of ever joining her there. He was amazed that she permitted herself to become flesh in his arms. ‘Naturally, it went to my head a little,’ he admitted to himself. And she, for her part, had believed in his declarations of eternal love and in the miracle of being herself. Therein no doubt was where he had been guilty – by first exalting Paula immoderately and then too lucidly taking her true measure. Yes, they had both made mistakes. But that wasn’t the question; the question now was to break it off. He turned over words in his mind. Did she have any suspicion of what was about to come? Generally, when he remained silent for any length of time, she was quick to question him.

‘Why are you moving things around?’ he asked.

‘Don’t you think the room looks nicer this way?’

‘Would you mind sitting down for just a minute?’

‘Why? Am I annoying you?’

‘No, not at all. But I’d like to have a talk with you.’

She let out a choked little laugh. ‘How solemn you look! You aren’t going to tell me you don’t love me any more, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Then anything else does not matter.’ She sat down, leaning towards him with a patient, slightly mocking expression. ‘Go ahead, darling, I’m listening.’

‘Loving or not loving each other isn’t the only thing in the world,’ he said.

‘To me, it’s all that matters.’

‘But not to me; I’m sure you know that. There are other things that count, too.’

‘Yes, I know – your work, travelling. I’ve never tried to dissuade you from them.’

‘There’s another thing that’s important to me, and I’ve told you this often – my freedom.’

She smiled again. ‘Now don’t tell me I haven’t given you enough freedom!’

‘As much as living together permits, I suppose. But for me, freedom means first of all solitude. Do you remember when I first came here to stay? We agreed then that it would only be till the end of the war.’

‘I didn’t think I was a burden on you,’ she said, no longer smiling.

‘No one could be less of a burden than you. But I do think it was better when we lived apart.’

Paula smiled. ‘You used to come here every night. You used to say you couldn’t sleep without me.’

True, he had told her that, but only during the first year, not after. He didn’t, however, contest the point. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but at least I used to work in my room at the hotel …’

‘That room was just one of your youthful whims,’ she replied in an indulgent voice. ‘No promiscuity, no living together – you must admit your code was rather abstract. I really can’t believe you still take it seriously.’

‘But it’s not at all abstract. When two people live together, you can’t avoid building up tensions on the one hand and becoming negligent on the other. I realize I’m often disagreeable and negligent, and I know it hurts you. It would be much better for us not to see each other except when we really felt like it.’

‘But I always feel like seeing you,’ she said reprovingly.

‘When I’m tired, or out of sorts, or when I’m working, I prefer being alone,’ Henri said coldly.

Again Paula smiled. ‘You’re going to be alone for a whole month. When you get back, we’ll see whether or not you’ve changed your mind.’

‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘it won’t change.’