A Singular Man Read online

  My abrupt departure from Compiègne, instead of revealing the deranged state I was in, could have been taken for indifference. I now did not care in the least. I was determined never again to have anything at all to do with Richard. He did not know where I was. I had gone off without leaving an address as though he had not counted for anything better than a vulgar innkeeper. I admitted that he had always been in the right, and I, always in the wrong, without for all that sensing any feeling of inferiority with regard to him. I did write to him, however. There are certain satisfactions we do not have the strength to deny ourselves. I wrote him that I renounced the will Denise had made in my favor, and asked him to burn it. For this there was no need. Richard had certainly done so already, but I was set on his knowing that my disinterestedness was conscious. In former times I would have been loath to act in such a manner. Today kid gloves were no longer in order. I needed simply to act as he himself did, and whenever anything I did might win me some consideration, not to scruple over publicizing it. Since I had no idea then that I would be spending four years in the rue Casimir Delavigne hotel where I had just taken a room, I suggested (without bothering myself about the conclusions he might draw) should he chance to have something to communicate to me, that he write to me at the rue Cujas poste restante.

  To shut oneself up between four walls when one is suffering is a kind of mortification. I did not leave my room except at mealtime. It seemed to me that in this way all the harm I might have done Denise was atoned for. I remained all day long sitting in front of the window, without newspapers, without books. Thus did two weeks go by. Denise had been dead for seventeen days. Seventeen days!

  I could no longer bear being cloistered this way. But before resuming my life I felt ever more strongly that I was duty-bound to visit Denise's grave. The strangest ideas were crossing my mind. That visit had to be made secretly, no one in Compiègne must know. It would be comforting, at such a moment, to have a friend who would give me warm assistance, who would escort me, buy the railway the tickets, who would look after me as one does a child.

  One of the greatest disadvantages of isolation, is it not to be obliged to do everything onself? I remembered the privileged people I had known who were spared from everything. I recalled Madame Dechatellux's death. Neither Jules, nor Richard, nor the foregathered relatives had been distracted from their sorrow. By contrast I had to take care of my body and its needs. Once upon a time I had done this, joyfully, when having returned to civilian life I had to do my sewing, my washing, my cooking. Back then it had not occurred to me to envy those who were shielded from such chores. I had even looked down upon those spoiled children.

  So I would go to Compiègne by myself. Having to attend to the material details of living is an excellent discipline, in times of happiness or in times of sadness. Nobody would accompany me. I was sorry about this, for in such circumstances friendships come forth strengthened. But just when my plan was giving me an objective once again I made a painful discovery. How had it happened that at the very moment I had the pious thought of going to kneel beside Denise's grave, I realized that I did not know where her grave was, that at the very moment I was preparing to act like other men, an unexpected detail showed me that I was still outside the human community? A year earlier, supposing I had found myself in a similar situation, I would have justified myself by invoking my special situation. But today what excuse could I plead?

  Even so I went to Compiègne. I took the earliest morning train to avoid running into anyone when I arrived. "Why am I hiding?" I asked myself as I rode through the bright, deserted countryside. The sun, which had just come up, was already dazzling. Everyone was still asleep. The sun was shining for me alone. It must yet go on for a long space in solitude. Then clouds would hide it from mankind, when mankind awoke. What an intoxicating sensation of freedom I felt! Having lost everything, I had nothing left to lose.

  No automobile was waiting at the level crossing in Compiègne. I was making an excursion into the past, but the time which had seemed so long since Denise's death was but a day when I crossed place de la Gare. My uplifted state faded away. I had pictured myself kneeling by a grave and I was calm. Even now was I giving way to Denise? She had thought, she had acted, and I had held my peace. I was still holding my peace. I remained immobile and mute as I had been during the big scenes, when she was alive.

  I made off. I realized that this pilgrimage did not correspond to a need that sprang from my heart, that I had done nothing but conform to a custom. I discovered that the howsoever natural gesture of laying a flower upon a grave was not permitted to me.

  What then was my purpose in going every day to rue Cujas? Richard and I, were we not strangers to one another? What could we say to each other now that Denise was no more? Did I need a sign of life in the solitude that surrounded me? Did the need for such a sign cause me to forget our mutual lack of understanding? Was I then continuing to acting within obscurity in a way I had not acted in broad daylight? Was it because nobody could see me that I was going to rue Cujas every day?

  I sat down at an outdoor café on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. After all, wasn't I a man like the rest? Students went by, singing, jostling each other. I watched them. Their insouciance brought me relief.

  TODAY

  Hôtel Maillot, a Monday morning in January 1939. Twenty-one months have gone by since my so memorable meeting with Maître Logelin. I went back to see him four months ago. He had no sum at all to hand over to me. I asked him to inform Richard of my visit. Forty-eight hours later I received a check for eighteen thousand francs. My life, essentially, has not changed. The same alternation of ups and downs continues. I am happy, as I have often been when, after a difficult period, I found myself free from worries about tomorrow.

  From my window I can see porte Maillot, the "Big Dipper" roller coaster, the moon over the Luna Park entrance, the white stripes on the pavement at this intersection with all its intricate road-signs. A light mist is floating above the first patches of new grass. The weather was lovely on Sunday. And smoke rises softly from the cast-iron incinerators where waste paper is burning.

  I have arranged, despite its not being the practice in this hotel, to pay by the month. I was granted a ridiculously small reduction. Multiplying thirty-five francs (the price of my room by the day) by thirty (the average number of days in a month) you get one thousand fifty francs, and they dropped the fifty francs. In the old days I would unfailingly have refused a reduction whose insignificance did not offset the advantage of paying the way everyone else does. But I accepted it, for I no longer care about the esteem I once thought I inspired by appearing to disdain personal advantages.

  The tedious part of my dressing is finished. What remains can be protracted indefinitely. This includes picking out a shirt, a tie, the contemplation, which I do not like to hurry, of my overall person. It is not as vain as it sounds. When life smiles on us, we take pleasure, each morning, in restoring the previous days's bloom to our physical appearance.

  Every so often I turn back to the window, as you do on a train when the landscapes change. Sparrows, which take flight only on big occasions, hop along my strip of outdoor ledge. I watch them peck at the crumbs fallen from the floors above. Do they see through glass?

  Finally, I have a last look at myself in the mirror. No hint anywhere of faulty taste, of negligence. I am at my maximum. The thing now is to appear not to know it.

  Today, I prefer to turn to the right, to walk up avenue de la Grande Armée. Another new day, more clouds, more sunshine. I went back to see Maître Logelin. Let us imagine that this fact become known to the entire world. Some would despise me. But would I not have the approval of others?

  Reaching rue Duret, I come upon a former Spahi officer, Captain Lamoure. I see him here and there in Paris. We stop. The passers-by continue on their way. As for us, we are acquaintances.

  "Come and see me," he tells me.

  It has been such a long day that I arrive at the restaurant at s
ix-thirty. I feel an urge to talk, to laugh, to be seen in a good humor. Without having done anything to bring this about, I sense that I am credited with a higher social standing than the other customers, that I would be viewed, if I were twenty years old, as a young man from a good family. They have not yet turned the lights on. I head toward the back. The owner, his wife, and the waitress are seated around a table. A young woman, the owners' daughter, is showing the things she bought this afternoon: silk stockings, a bottle of perfume, a box of stationery. All these objects are passed from hand to hand. And now I make an extraordinary observation. I too could take these objects being held out to me like snapshots in which I don't appear but which it would be unfriendly not to show to me. They are waiting for some sign of interest on my part. I do not move. I cannot touch those objects. They do not belong to me.

  What happens next is stranger still.

  "What do you think of this writing paper, Monsieur Jean?" the young woman asks me. "I bought it for my daughter. She doesn't want to write on anything but her own personal writing paper."

  "She'll be pleased."

  "But is it true that the writing paper they carry at Prix Unique comes from Japan?"

  "I don't know."

  " 'Made in Japan.' Here. Read what it says."

  She holds out the box. I take it. But I came near to not taking it. In order to reach my hand forward I had to picture the general bewilderment a refusal would have caused.

  It is four o'clock in the morning. I am in bed, stretched on my back. This is the position I prefer to smoke in. I like how my cigarette tastes when it has trouble remaining lit. I think about the man in the bunk next to mine, in a barracks, who also used to smoke at night. I am unable to get back to sleep, but no gloomy thoughts are haunting me. Yesterday I let myself go, physically as well as emotionally. Inside, I already feel what you would call a need to make up for that lost time.

  "You're an early bird!" Henry Lamoure tells me when I show up at his office.

  An officer at Compiègne, Henry Lamoure had known Denise, her parents, her uncle, Jacqueline, Madame Mobecourt and her sister, probably Colonel Laîsné as well, and everyone in the town's society. Naturally he had noticed that my presence there was tolerated and no more. He had nevertheless feigned unawareness of this. Made assistant director of the insurance company where Richard had thought of getting me a position, he had returned to Compiègne regularly, drawn by the hunting, the sports, the fairs, and not by dark family histories knowledge of which might have closed certain doors to him. Oh those festivals, those fetes in the park! How miserable they seemed to me, those paper lanterns they used for lighting, hung from wires stretched between trees! I did not realize that just as a stick is enough to make a puppet into a policeman, those lamps were enough to create the illusion of a night-time fete.

  I have come to ask Lamoure to talk to me about Compiègne, to tell me the latest gossip. He announces to me that I am just the man he is looking for. He had brought up my name with the management, a conversation held by professionals about an amateur who may be useful. "Oh! don't get the idea that we'll treat you like a beginner. The commission you'll be receiving will be bigger than what our most senior people get. We want to strike out into new territory. We want to put together a team made up exclusively of men with connections and belonging to the same circles. If, for example, you induce your Dechatellux uncle to sign a contract with us. . . But do take a seat."

  He hands me papers which he takes from various piles, as they do in travel agencies. He is out of a certain schedule of figures, he will mail me a copy.

  "Study the whole thing. You'll let me know your answer. I repeat that this will be very much worth your while."

  Once out the door, I threw the papers away. Then I followed a pretty woman, without result. This led me down a little street that ended in the Marché Saint-Honoré, where I had never been. I waited for more than an hour in front of the house she had entered. I ate lunch while reading a newspaper. I had my coffee at Maison du Brésil on rue Auber.

  It is four o'clock by the time I get back. I open the window. It is a fine day. The sun is setting behind the Bois. It has already sunk out of sight, but by hurrying up to the hotel terrace roof I shall perhaps still be able to see it. It's the lamp being taken away into an adjoining room. It lights Saint-Cloud, and back here everything seems abandoned. Dear God, I beg you, give me some purpose in life, let me devote my strength to some noble and useful cause.

  We are walking down the Champs-Elysées together. It is eleven in the morning. The white roofs of the buses flow along in the distance. The Tuileries are veiled in a gauze. Is it dust or a country mist? It is pierced every now and then by a gleam of light reflected from windows on rue de Rivoli. We speak very little. It does seem that we have no reason to stay together, and yet we stay. One evening, by chance, Madame Vallosier entered the restaurant. She sat down at the nearest table. She asked me to pass her the menu. Without reading it, she told the waitress: "Give me whatever you have." She intrigued the customary diners. "Try to find out who that lady is," the owner's wife whispered into my ear.

  We reach place de la Concorde. "Where do you wish to go?" I really look as though I had no wish at all. "Should we go to the boulevards and have an apéritif?"

  Now I talk about myself. My father was an officer. But I never knew him. My mother was a woman without means. Madame Mobecourt, a lady in Compiègne who had taken an interest in her, did nothing to marry her off. At present my mother lives on rue Théodore de Banville. Anyhow, I was consequently shipped from one place to another. I was a student at Lakanal, at a private school in Menton, at the lycée in Nice. The war interrupted all that. Once discharged, I wanted to rely upon myself alone, to be independent. I went back to school, but I felt pressed for time. I lived through a difficult period. It would make a surprising story. Then, when I had understood that it would be impossible for me to achieve what I desired, I returned to Compiègne and I married a childhood friend. But she died just as we were about to settle ourselves in the south of France. I live alone at present. I am still undecided on my next step.

  I could keep on talking like this for hours, without contradicting myself once.

  I am off to see my mother. Now that nothing attaches me to the past anymore, now that I am free of all outside influence, I no longer hesitate to visit those to whom I am near, or who have drawn near to me. My mother left rue Théodore de Banville years ago. She lives in a narrow, flat-roofed house squeezed between two handsome apartment buildings on rue des Acacias. The ups and downs the elderly go through always surprise me. I am too quick to believe that the game is over with.

  I climb a dirty stairway. I pull a bell cord and find myself face to face with my mother. She must now be in her sixties. I listen impassively as I am told that she is living with a son she had by one of her lovers. He is now twenty years old and studying medicine. For a long time the boy's father helped my mother out, but he does not give her any more money now. She explains that it was not for ordinary economy's sake that he stopped paying her anything. It seems that he has millions. She says they were not in agreement over how their son André should be educated. She at once adds that she continues to be on good terms with this man, has not kept up a grudge against him, does not think less highly of him. I sense that she is sincere. After having been so open with me, why has she to stiffen when I speak to her of how useful it would be for André to meet Richard, who is a doctor? She shifts the conversation. She informs me that she has just moved, that the building she left was still shabbier than this one. "It was an excellent occasion," I observed, "to ask André's father for some money." She explains that she did not do it lest this man (for whom I am beginning to have a decided dislike) imagine that she was counting on their relations in order to call on him at a later time. She hastens to add that he would not have refused her. But it comes to me all of a sudden that this man, about whom she has been going on with such satisfaction, long ago disappeared from her life. Men
tioning him was a way of diverting my attention, of hiding a secret ambition from me. This ambition is that André become a great doctor. As well as rich, educated, and honored he will at the same time be grateful. When in your later years you have found a cause that deserves your single-minded dedication, you do not want to share with anyone the joy of seeing it triumph. A concrete goal replaces the vague happiness that you have been content to seek all your life. You accept neither advice nor encouragement. Others do not have the same reasons for desiring to achieve it that we do. However it be sincere, their approval by modifying in the face of the first obstacle may cast us back into the uncertainties of the past. My mother discovered that you must be strong to succeed. Her son will be strong. Her son will steel his heart for come what may. I look at him. How far he is from suspecting what is expected of him!