A Singular Man Read online

  A faint mist drifted over the avenue. We sat down at an outdoor café. An uneasiness arose in us. There was something frightfully personal about our adventure. So we had struggled for so long to obtain only this! We could not complain anymore now, we ought to be satisfied. "Then what else do we desire?" We asked ourselves this question in order to mask our uneasiness. It was a good thing that Denise who, married for an hour, had felt the need to let herself go, to feel protected, now pulled herself together.

  Parisian life seemed to unfold before us as though for the first time. Everything about it was gay, lively. You sensed its readiness to come to the defense of the innocent, its inherent good spirits. Evil made its appearance there only accidentally. And as for us, here we were, side by side.

  We watched each other live. Every day, like the adolescent who, after his first sexual pleasure, wonders whether he will not experience still greater ones, we would wonder whether something unexpected was not going to occur tomorrow. We revelled in our intimacy. Then came the moment when we ran out of things to say to each other.

  When we saw our family again, it was just as if we had never left it. Madame Dechatellux even showed great joy. Reprobation was kept perfectly concealed. They found a cruel pleasure in making us believe that nothing had changed. Denise detected nothing. She was touched. She was even visited by remorse. She thought that she had been unfair to her family. When eighteen months later Richard married in his turn (he was to become another man under the influence of his strange wife, whose maiden name was Fondelaire) her family's indifference towards her could no longer escape her notice. Nobody had consulted her. She had not been admitted to the conventicles which precede nuptials. Wanting the same for others that she had wanted for herself, she had loudly approved. But she had been made to understand that this marriage had no relation to her own, and that the general approval rendered hers unnecessary.

  Despite this coolness we returned often to Compiègne. We were kept at an ever greater distance. People who fall out with each other always dream of great successes—not the Dechatelluxes, however. A heavy atmosphere reigned throughout the house. It seemed that Denise was held responsible for it, that because of her a pall had been cast over her mother's golden years. A rancour of the forsaken partner hovered in the deserted rooms, without that causing anyone to cease pretending he had lived life to the hilt. They talked to Denise about imaginary journeys, new relationships, plans. They had even stopped going to the trouble of telling her the truth.

  The years went by. The comforting feeling of beginning one's life afresh does not last. Man is not built to delete the past and start again from scratch. Instead of living a new existence, I little by little realized that I was continuing my old one. And I made this discovery just when Denise and I became indissolubly united. What thus bound us together was neither love nor marriage, nor the struggle we had waged together, but the extraordinary abandonment that would overtake us were we to separate. The Denise I had seen laughing among her friends, the Denise I had seen in the bosom of her family, would she be able to endure such abandonment? Was this not the story of Germaine all over again? The one had left the post office for my sake, and the other, her family.

  We knew a day would come when we would run out of money. And now all of a sudden that day arrived. For all our having foreseen it, it took us by surprise. What had happened? Nothing. It was exactly like what happens as regards age. There was now nothing to do but regret. As the saying goes, all we had left was our eyes to weep with. We ought to have done either this or that. Yes, but it was too late. We were without any resource at all. The quarrels over the securities remaining in the family's joint possession grew more acrimonious, but were not settled. Hidden behind Denise, I was in a humiliating situation. I must admit that nothing was said against me, at least not to my knowledge. They must have viewed me as irresponsible, which allows me to think that in the final analysis the wicked do not use all the weapons at their disposal.

  As she was unable to gain possession of certain stocks and shares due to come to her, Denise reported her brother's dishonesty to all and sundry. Everyone sided with her, as they had done in Compiègne when she spoke of marrying. Stories had to be listened to about how things were done correctly in other families. Everyone offered himself as an example. Our father had specified thus and so. When our mother died, this is what we did. As the eldest, this is what I said: "You wish me to draw up the partition of real goods? I shall hand a copy of it to each of you. You shall examine it. You shall consult your notary, your lawyer, whoever you like. If you have an objection, you shall raise your objection. As for the objects that cannot be divided, those to which we all ascribe a sentimental value, we shall draw straws for them."

  I was treated to descriptions of other, equally perfect ways of proceeding. I was finding it more and more unpleasant to listen to this. I myself leaned towards temporizing, concessions, private bargaining. I do not claim to be an especially sensitive man, but those disclosures of family dealings deeply shocked me. Denise stilled my scruples. I knew nothing about such things (she was right). Figures were figures. Not only did accounts have to be exact, but they had to be settled swiftly. That was an elementary rule. From all evidence, I was unacquainted with any rule. One proof of this was the humiliating to-do about the overcoat I had borrowed but forgotten to bring back the following day, the anger of Denise's friend at whose home I had however spent a pleasant evening.

  I stood aside. True, my intervention was not required. Once, however, when Denise and I were alone I dared insinuate that things need not be the same everywhere. In the Fruchaut family, for instance, I had never noticed any such disposition to greed. Denise gave me to understand that I did not know what I was talking about. Everywhere it was the same way. I did not persist. "It's only little people," she concluded, "who don't bicker over money." I said to myself that after all she might well be right, and the Fruchauts, whom I had rated so high, fell in my esteem. Yet they got along so well. Henceforth I took care not to cite their example. But I was not convinced. When large sums are the bone of contention, it is admissible that some within a given family stand up against others. As concerned Denise, though, this was not the case. The clash was over something on the order of twenty or thirty thousand francs.

  How uncomfortable it made me, in the midst of our difficulties, to hear Denise talk about her safe-deposit vault, about her investments manager, about her bankers! I confessed it to her. Her astonishment was such that I realized that the habits wealth engenders do not disappear when it does, that our present distress, while identical in its consequences to the distress I had undergone, did not resemble it at all in any other point.

  In the Mademoiselle Vialatte era, I had been, according to Denise, neither a child of middle-class parentage nor a working man's child nor even an adopted orphan. I was beginning to think that this assertion rather hit the nail on the head. For instance, while observing how Denise's cousins lived, I had come to see that the upbringing Jacqueline had given me (one I thought so exceptional, which is understandable when you have lived until the age of twelve in a gatekeepers' lodge) bore no comparison with theirs. Those boys enjoyed the liberties of adults. The teachers before whom I had trembled for so many years inspired no fear in them. They spoke of them as their parents' subordinates. It was thus that, little by little, Jacqueline's prestige had sunk in my eyes. She had inculcated in me what she knew, but she did not know a great deal. To her I owed some strong ideas, like that of personal responsibility. But when combined they formed a contradictory whole. I understood what Denise meant in saying that I was neither the son of someone from the middle class nor a working-man's son. I was an ignorant young man, neglectfully raised, who, thanks to what he was being allowed to see today, was gradually gaining in refinement.

  I resolved at last to return to the advertising agency where I had worked seven years before. Denise had several times expressed a desire that I do so. Whenever I had left it was like a man who never i
ntends to come back. And now Denise had asked me to perform this about-face! And she considered it natural that I do so! She had no inkling that this was harder on me than getting myself taken on as an unskilled worker in a factory, for instance. From her unexperienced person's viewpoint, the only thing I had to overcome was my pride. "It is never dishonoring," she would repeat, "to ask for work, even from people we know."

  René Gallu, my former boss, was not in his office. I questioned the concierge. He informed me that Gallu usually lunched at the restaurant next door. There was in the reconstituting of his daily habits something that brought my past wretchedness back to mind. Suddenly, from where I was sitting, I saw René Gallu through the window, standing in front of the restaurant. He kept changing his mind about whether to enter. He was talking to one of his brokers, just as in the past remembering, every time the conversation seemed over, that he had overlooked something. Noticing how this inability to wind things up grated on me, I realized that good will by itself is not enough when you wanted work. You needed patience also. Finally, in he came. He was still elegant. He was wearing the classic double-breasted dark blue suit with white pin-stripes, a lavender shirt with attached collar, a tie that he apparently did not consider too garish, and a rectangular wristwatch with heavily drawn numerals. The narrowness of his Croix de Guerre ribbon did not denote scorn for decorations but went along with vestmental modesty. He was holding his hat in his hand. His hair still had its glossiness. His closely shaven cheeks had that bluish cast which in other days you used to notice among actors. On finding René Gallu so much like what he had been before, an uneasiness came over me. The years I had just lived had been lived by him too. So he had learned no lesson from them. So he had simply done his best to stay the same. A little later I decided that this impression some people give of being immobile is deceiving. We believe they have vegetated just as we believe that the agricultural workers we see from a train are sunk in boredom, but it could be that they are more self-contained than we.

  I had imagined that Denise was genuinely eager that I resume my job. Great was my surprise when, upon my return, I discovered I had been wrong. Had she suddenly grasped the underlying reason for my aversion? No, the truth was entirely different. She had heard so much disparagement of me that she had finally exclaimed: "Very well, since this is the way things are, Jean will do nothing but what pleases him." Had the partition of her father's estate been carried out honestly, I seemingly would not have been obliged to go back to work for Gallu. "Jean has no reason to bear the consequences of my family's nastiness and nonsense. He is my husband. When I married him he had no situation. I was perfectly aware of that."

  A few months later, Denise had the idea of paying a visit to her aunt and her mother's sister-in-law. As far back as she could remember, she had heard only disdainful things said about these two women, and so it was that when we were married it had not even occurred to her to notify them.

  And now she was preparing to go see them. Upon my advising against it she expressed surprise. No one could possibly know less about how society works (that perhaps was why she had married me) than she. The idea that people would think she was less proud because she was in trouble did not even enter her mind.

  Strangely enough, neither the aunt nor the sister-in-law ventured a connection between Denise's unexpected visit and her situation. Their unfortunate coincidence did not escape them. But Denise so obviously did not see what this coincidence could lead one to suspect, that to appear to have it in mind would have been to show a very mean side of oneself. They were wholeheartedly with her. They gave her to understand that they had always made a distinction between her and her family. They found Richard's conduct abominable. However, prudence bade them to appear to be standing above the fray. These women had things they could say about Albert Dechatellux. They took good care not to utter them. He was dead. Let him rest in peace. Then they spoke of those qualities of the heart that alone count in life. They wanted to show that perfect union was not the privilege of the Dechatellux family. And when they made bold to talk about me, it was to say that I was certainly a charming man, that I did not deserve all the vexations I had been subjected to.

  But in vain did they behold right to be on our side, in vain did they consider that in as much as we loved each other we had no need to concern ourselves about others, Denise was left with the feeling that they understood the family's point of view.

  Oh! resentment had not blinded them. You would have said they had never suspected that they might have been shunned. And when they were led to give their opinion the two sides of the scales they held were ostensibly even.

  They never did anything else. I was wary of saying this to Denise. Just as she had not been alive to the illogicality of her visit, so she had not anticipated the uproar it would cause. At present Denise's two relatives were in consultation, going here, going there, relating what had happened. No one denied that Denise had fine qualities. These were even exaggerated as they sought to appear to have no part in the miserable tittle-tattle beginning to go around. Denise had a heart of gold. Her husband didn't seem to be an evil person. Of course, he wasn't well off. He left it to his wife to dig them out. He was, so the story went, the son of a sergeant-major and of a chambermaid. Here was the once-in-a-lifetime occasion to pay back that snooty Dechatellux family in their own coin. But have a care. Stand behind Denise and they ran the risk of being lumped with her, of justifying the estrangement they had suffered from and of which they wished, through a well-maintained neutrality, to show the injustice.

  "How is one to help them?" all these people wondered. Knowledge of our misfortunes had come like a bolt out of the blue. Consequently, it was difficult to palliate them with little bits of financial assistance, as was usually done when the situation had been common knowledge for some time. People recalled that if Denise had excluded herself from her family (that was how she herself put it), she was a charming person nonetheless. So one had to intervene. To arrange a meeting they sent her an enigmatically brief pneu, for these people, the moment they departed from their day to day life, would cloak themselves in mystery, no telling why.

  Denise went to her aunt's, again despite my wishes. After a lengthy preamble she was asked to think about what might be of help to her.

  "You were right," Denise told me when she returned. But it did not occur to her to wonder at such hesitation. She even felt a certain gratitude toward her aunt for having given her a cordial welcome. She did not want to admit that she had been expecting some assistance from her relative. And so that there might be no doubt on this point, she subsequently compelled herself to visit her regularly.

  When later on, illness having forced her to take refuge in Compiègne, it could appear that Denise had made peace with her mother, that aunt and that sister-in-law forgot what had happened. They made no use of the advantage they had gained when Denise confusedly awaited some support from them. To maintain relations which had developed thanks alone to this situation, they judged it a clever move to seem not to remember anything.

  At this point a dreadful event occurred. Our future hinged on Madame Dechatellux's death. It was forgivable that this be so for Denise's future. But for mine! At the beginning I did not realize what was going to happen. I attributed to impatience the hurry I would be in to hear from Denise about her visits to her mother. No other reason could have occurred to me. I was far and away from having my advantage in mind. Denise knew this very well. I had come to like Madame Dechatellux a great deal. If for a long time she had displayed toward me the condescension of a patroness for a deserving young man, I had very soon detected the childishness of this pretension.

  Today I could no longer hide the truth from myself.

  I had believed that I was never again to find myself in a situation which for baseness resembled what I had experienced when one evening I had sauntered up and down boulevard de la Madeleine until one o'clock in the morning. Since then I had not known the feeling of shame, and now I was fe
eling a shame worse than all I had known hitherto. I had believed in my victory! What an error! Depraved habits fade away on their own, and if you are not clairvoyant you can attribute to yourself the merit for this. But they disappear only to recur in a different form, as is said of diseases. I was attacked in a sector where I no longer thought to maintain my defenses. How could I have been reduced to wishing for someone's death? "Wishing" was not the word. I did not wish for Madame Dechatellux's death. I did not desire it. It was worse. I had let events develop in such a way that this death would straighten out everything. That is how I had been caught. I had believed that to be a man you had to live in accordance with your conscience. And all of a sudden I had the revelation that this was insufficient. And this revelation, like the preceding ones, came too late. Oh, the ever new lessons life teaches me! I had felt that my youth was an abomination that had to be concealed from everyone. Then I had naively convinced myself that with each passing year my youth lay farther behind me, so that I could now allude to it lightly, without one knowing whether I was being serious or ironic. I had convinced myself that never again would I relive the suffering inflicted upon us, not by poverty, for poverty is without importance, but by the shame we feel before our thoughts, our acts, our very selves, and lo, I was reliving it more violently than ever in the past. I was at least able to tell myself then that society had its share of responsibility. But now!

  I no longer dared come within Madame Dechatellux' sight. At the sound of her name, I would lower my eyes. And this was the moment when we were forced to return to Compiègne.

  Denise had a fever. Was this my punishment? I felt dizzy. Richard, whose hand I refused to shake, became my savior. My God, why was it not I who had the fever? We could no longer pay for anything. Down upon us they came: the rent, the gas and electric bills, shopkeepers' bills, threats of seizure. You sink only little by little, which had given us time to try everything. To us no means remained for extricating ourselves from this hell. We left our rue Pergolese apartment, taking the key with us, giving no forwarding address, leaving everything in a repulsive state. "Let her die," I pleaded, "so that all this may come to an end and such torture never begin again!" But as I have said, my destiny was marked throughout by a certain mildness. When Madame Dechatellux died, I had stopped wishing for her death. I had lived close by her for several months. I had spent quiet evenings close by her. I had understood that she was a living being.