A Singular Man Read online

  "Do you know who you are?"

  There was a question to which, simple as it did indeed seem, I found it impossible to reply. Was he asking about my character or my social position?

  "Do you know who your parents were? Your father was a second lieutenant in the dragoons, I know, but he never acknowledged you, and your mother was a decent girl, I'll grant you that, whom Madame Mobecourt had, I believe, taken in."

  I protested that such a definition meant nothing. Why always place the emphasis on social background? Could one not simply suppose that I was the son of two persons who had loved each other? Why always this "who was your father? who was your mother?"

  Certain people know how to make us understand what they think of us without putting it into words. With flawless objectivity Jules Dechatellux had established that I was a natural child, that I had no family, no station, no means. He had not understood how, in such conditions, I could dare dream of marriage, whether it be to Denise or to some other young woman.

  While he had been addressing those speeches to me I had thought about those men who will not put up with the slightest affront. They rise to their feet, they reply. I had not budged. Actually, he was right. What I had heard was true, despairingly true. No personal antagonism was involved here. What he had said to me he would have said to his best friend, granting the latter could have found himself in my situation. I wanted however to get angry. The occasion was superb. But I had become frightened. I was like a woman who is being outraged in a deserted place. If she calls for help, the man rectifies his behavior.

  A few days later I made a discovery. I had gone to see Monsieur Albert Dechatellux for no special reason. When you want to get rid of somebody you start by trying to get him to leave of his own accord. I was suspicious. I was taking no notice of the unpleasant allusions. My mind was on other matters. And suddenly it dawned on me that I was commanding attention. What! I, commanding attention? The scales dropped from my eyes, as they say. I understood that I had never ceased to be a center of attraction, that I had lost sight of reality, that I had no reason to visit the Dechatelluxes so often, and that, officially, Denise was nothing to me, neither my fiancée nor my wife.

  The thought crossed my mind of returning to Paris at once. But a few hours can take the edge off one's pride and one's fine resolutions alike. I stayed on. I made do with turning over a new leaf, hoping naively that nobody had noticed anything.

  The properties belonging to Jules and Albert were located on the same avenue, two or three hundred yards apart. Though we were right between the two of them I had the feeling I had got lost. The sky was a deep blue. The familiar places, thanks to which Compiègne was not an unknown town for me, no longer stood out. I was expected. I had been told: "You'll come tomorrow, won't you?" As though it had been my wish not to come back. We were all equals. There were neither inferiors nor superiors. What a joke! They hardly said one word to me. "You'll come tomorrow, won't you?" Maybe Denise and I had fallen out of love, such at least was their hope. They still had a good many things to tell me. They kept still. Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps the Dechatelluxes had the feeling, as I did, that life is not eternal, that each passing month diminishes the menaces life suspends over our heads. Once we are left with but a few years to live, these menaces cannot very well all come crashing down on us.

  We took a walk in the forest. I was surprised that the trees still had all their leaves, since in my mind autumn starts in September. The air was so calm that the zigzagging flight of the butterflies had an inexplicable quality. The weather was still very warm.

  The steam from the locomotive faded into the night. A drizzle was falling. The windows were spotted. A strange odor of turned milk, of eau de Cologne, of oranges filled the compartment. Saying goodbye, that evening, had upset me. A train station, the rain, you embrace, you go your separate ways. Was everything going to change? In Paris, the Salon de l'Automobile was just opening. I leaned out of the window. We were in love. One day we would marry. How happy must be those who have a family, who stand at the center of a little universe, who if they stray outside it do so with caution. Returning, it is to resume the place held vacant for them. No doubts, no fears. Do they endure heartache, do they suffer, yet their lives go on unchanged even so. They have simply felt the effect of the law that rules us all. And when they die, for all their having to leave their wives, their children, their friends, their possessions, once again they do but feel the effect of the law that rules us all. This evening I was leaving Denise. I was going to be alone. Temptations would assail me anew. In an hour, as soon as I arrived, I would have to struggle against them with all my strength. How privileged they are who, once alone, are not different from what they were in society! I had no desire to go back to my room, to be yet more alone.

  But what I so dreaded did not come about. The city's stir, its lights were enough to distract me. I did not look for anyone to talk to. Pleased by this apparent victory over myself, I proceeded home.

  It was the next day that I received the following telegram: "Monsieur Dechatellux deceased." A domestic had dispatched it at Denise's request. Not much by way of verb. One could think that this misfortune had not occurred the night before. Monsieur Dechatellux deceased. Just yesterday I had exchanged a few words with him. This word "deceased" pursued me, as though it behove me to find in it some difference from the word "dead," as though this difference once found, things would not be irremediably over with. But no. "Deceased" meant "dead." Albert Dechatellux was dead.

  One November afternoon Denise came looking for me. Her family had collected at rue Verniquet. It was two months since I had seen her last. I had kept in the shadows. This situation suited me perfectly. I left Denise to cope by herself. The sorrow they were all stricken with caused me to be forgotten. It did certainly seem that in my relations with the Dechatelluxes I must never be myself. For now I could not help passing off my withdrawal as respect for the family's grief.

  Denise invited me out for tea. I detained her at my place. Afterwards I had a painful impression of having behaved contemptibly. I had the feeling I had taken advantage of her being free, of there being no one who could prevent her from marrying me. As we drove along in the taxi, I said: "What I did is not right." She looked at me with surprise. When will the most natural acts stop awakening feelings of remorse in me?

  Now that our marriage was inevitable, Richard tried to wheedle us in order to maintain a controlling eye on what we were about. This was a bachelor Richard, a Richard who had nothing in common with the dedicated physician of the rue de Rome. One day I told him I had no cause whatever to show him gratitude. He took offence at that. We were in the mood of animals about to lock horns. Denise had intervened. You blush from shame when you recall such scenes.

  And that way of his of talking about the advantageous thing to do! That feigning to address oneself to an equal. "You must be insistent with Denise that she take it upon herself to sign the transfers, for we are nearing the deadline," said Richard who cared not at all about peremptory pleas. How truly sincere he appeared! "No, Jean (the sound of my first name on his lips! ), you do not have the right to think such a thing of us," he exclaimed one day when I foolishly confessed to him that I felt myself an intruder. He would draw up plans for our future. "You'll return to Compiègne. In Paris I'm afraid you'll experience difficulties making ends meet. You'll have an office in town, with a fine map of the department in front of you." His idea was to induce the management of an insurance company to shift their general agent in the Oise. I would remain a simple broker only for the time it took to engineer this ouster. I agreed, counting upon this project falling into oblivion. Denise was not any more ambitious than I. Her indifference made me feel uneasy. For I was wrong. The wise thing would have been to live in the way Richard wished. It was he who was right, not his sister, not I.

  Sometime later, he announced to us his intention of buying a house in Compiègne. He would rent it to us. It was for us, he declared, that he had decide
d to invest in real estate, for he was not partisan to this sort of operation. I had yet to find out that buying can be a source of worry. For me it was simple enough: "Either you buy something," I said to myself, "or you don't." Denise and Richard thought the house too expensive, whereas I, with a levity that must have shocked everybody, had mentally subtracted the sum being asked and had given no further thought to the matter.

  You are always poor compared to someone. Richard was not aware of this. For the truly rich, there must not be, it seemed to me, a great difference between him and me. I was mistaken. Richard was of their number. He hesitated, waited, chose. Like them he did not fear wasting his time. He knew that by these signs you recognized established wealth. What most surprised me was that so many people had gone into action for sums which struck me as mediocre. I imagined that you bought a house the way you would a suit, yielding ever so little to the salesman's wishes. Although the house was modest, Richard had already made ten trips to Compiègne. And Denise found this commendable. At bottom he preferred handling a piece of business to seeing patients.

  I suffered from my inferiority. Richard was convinced that he was the cause of this suffering, that I felt inferior to him. For a long time he struck a pose. He pretended not to know that I was observing him. He would niggle over the payment of an ordinary bill and would affect indifference over a heavy loss. At the point where a certain intimacy came to exist between us he started to play a rather surprising game, that of having nothing to hide from me. He wished to make me understand that men are guided by self-interest alone. He flew into a temper in front of me over an improperly claimed sum. It was understood that I was no better than he and that if I loved Denise, which he did not doubt, it did not make her fortune any the less of an influence upon my feeling for her. How could he have so little self-esteem? I wondered about this until the day he made a singular remark: "You have to realize, Jean, that in our milieu we do not need the approval of anyone in order to act." Indeed, that approval was quite superfluous. I was able to verify this now that I was having frequent occasion to meet Denise's friends. What discretion they displayed the moment a subject of complaint seemed to have a familial cause!

  In the spring the Dechatellux family moved back to Compiègne. My apprehension grew as our marriage approached. I did not think it possible that a formality could bring about the changes I wished for. Denise's mother had become very different. She pretended to believe her husband was still alive. Sometimes she spoke of him as if he had just then stepped out. She did not speak however in a way that could raise doubts about her sanity, but the while giving her interlocutor the look of those who lie without the assurance they will be believed. It could be that playing this dotty little game brought her relief. But she had played into Richard's hands. He had given her a lady's companion who never left her side.

  Madame Dechatellux all of a sudden showed a sincere affection for me. What had produced such a change? What mysterious evolution had her mistrust undergone in order to turn into sympathy? Was it age? Turnabouts of this sort are frequent among the elderly. They provide them with the illusion of an independence they have lost. Unless, to take a more generous view of it, a sincere affection had indeed come into being.

  When one morning I met Abel on the place du Marché-aux-Herbes, he had not even the curiosity to examine me, to try to grasp what kind of person I had become. Yet it might have been interesting to compare what he would have turned me into with what I had actually become. On I forget just what occasion I caught myself saying: "My father, Lieutenant-Colonel Le Claud ..." There are events we hold to be certain even though we cannot explain how we know about them. Thus, I was persuaded that my father had obtained the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Likewise I was persuaded that one of my aunts had taken the veil. Nothing could be less sure. But in the situation where I found myself, everything so far lacked solidity that I never hesitated to make a reality out of the vague rumors which happened to reach me.

  Jules Dechatellux had become another man since his elder brother's death. The day of rivalries, of jealousies was past. For months he had not seen his sister-in-law, Richard, Denise. I found out that he was in love with one of his wife's friends, a person nicknamed Bébé, and he was preparing to go on an extensive trip.

  Richard's idea now was to get his uncle to use his authority to dissuade Denise from marrying me. Was this not unconscionable on the part of a son who incessantly claimed he was obeying his father's secret desires? Could one more breezily demonstrate that behind all those unstinting marks of friendship there had been not one iota of sincerity? I asked myself this question, for in those days I was prone to trying to fathom the feelings of the people who hated me. One person had done one thing, another person, something else. By rejecting this I could obtain that. By accepting this . . . and so on.

  Richard's naïveté was truly infantile. Denise's feeling for me, he supposed, was superficial. If he was unsuccessful in bringing her around to reason, it was because he was her brother, but Jules Dechatellux would know how to get through to her.

  Denise did not allow herself to be upset. She went along with her brother's wish, though not without declaring to me that she found his interference grotesque. But life was continuing. One must not become obdurate, one must not make enemies needlessly. Such a discussion would serve to clear up misunderstandings. "After this there will be no further doubt about the feelings I have for you." What happened at their meeting? It seems that all Jules Dechatellux talked about was himself. He was a man who avoided efforts of whatever sort and for him the conciliating of two points of view was an effort. His mind was entirely taken up with his mistress. Richard had been unable to get a sign of life out of him. As for Denise, she admitted to having taken advantage of her uncle's euphoric state in order to talk bluntly about money. She was fed up with being unable to recuperate what belonged to her. Richard had sprung to his feet. Yes, his sister had certainly been more clever than he.

  She joined me where I was waiting for her, sitting on a bench by a path in the park. It was weeks since I had felt so demoralized. That discussion seemed to me of enormous importance. Was I not the subject of it? Strollers passed by. They had that air of the very pretty girls who look at no one, who stare solemnly into space. Certain ones had recognized me. They may have been curious to know how I had fared, but they were unwilling to turn their attention my way.

  Life is full of these coincidences. While Denise was at the home of Jules Dechatellux, Etienne's father, I caught sight of Monsieur Vialatte, Jaqueline's father. He advanced with little shuffling steps. On a leash he had a very small dog of the sort you find in city apartments. How old this man looked to me! Oh! he no longer thought of chucking his responsibilities. He had been a fool and lost everything he owned. He lived meanly, without servants, in a modest house which the Rivers and Forests Administration let to him for a pittance. He had not wanted to do anything for me. Nor had he wanted to do nothing whatever. And today the city of Compiègne was treating him the same way he had treated me. It had not adopted him, but it had not abandoned him either. I watched him move past, absolutely incapable of recognizing me unless I were to plant myself in front of him. Perhaps I should have stood up. But there was no longer anything between us. He would have forced himself to ask me a host of questions. Why oblige this old man to seem happy at seeing me again?

  At last Denise rejoined me. The discussion must not have centered upon me personally. They found me neither more nor less to their liking than anyone else. And yet I sat there, upon that bench, trembling in anticipation of an answer, trying to guess from Denise's demeanor whether it was positive or not.

  When she announced to me like a piece of good news that her uncle felt no animosity toward me I was unmoved. This was a politeness on Denise's part, since my name had not once come up. I sensed that it was no longer I who was the source of her preoccupation. All this animation was owing to her having just come from a family conference. Since her father's death she had been actin
g as though no wrong was attached to the premature enjoyment of what we desired. She was right to feel concerned solely about her kinsfolk, since she was so sure of all the rest.

  Manifestations of hostility toward us ended once we were married. Denise was now a stranger. They would be fair, courteous, amiable, since everything was over with. Official ceremonies bring out everyone's true condition with added clarity. I knew this and worried about it. Without my being different, my life, it seemed to me, would stand forth summarized in my person. Our marriage was far from resembling the one Denise had imagined as a young girl. I thought I was the cause of this disillusion. Just when everything is proceeding as if this were a profoundly united couple, how conspicuous do arrière pensées become! And how uncomfortable I felt amid the people around me! So long as only recent friends approached me, I could deal with them. But some loomed up from so far back in the past! Richard, fortunately, along with some of Denise's friends, so as to relieve the strain pretended to make this ceremony the occasion of a good time.

  Denise and I were walking down the Champs-Elysées. After the luncheon we had all promptly gone our separate ways. A few words were exchanged out on the sidewalk. Then Richard had sprung onto a bus. He seemed to be saying: "Now that you've achieved what you wanted, goodbye." He waved to us from the platform for quite some time.