A Singular Man Read online

  One afternoon I was so despondent that the bother of taking this woman out somewhere appeared to me a diversion. We were sitting in the celebrated office one partition wall of which was due to be removed. Outside, the weather was freezing cold. I had my eyes on the door at the far end of the vestibule, looking through its glass at the passers-by, in the constant hope that one might step into the hotel.

  "Would you like to go out together?" I suggested all of a sudden.

  "And where might we go?" she asked with such a look of gladness that I gazed at her with surprise.

  "How about going to a film, for instance?"

  "Do you know of one worth seeing?"

  "No. We'd be going to the movies just as something to do. That's all."

  A half-hour later we were sitting side by side in a little cinema on rue des Ecoles. I was not watching the movie. I was thinking of the six days I had still to wait before seeing Richard. But was this a male delusion?—it seemed to me that my neighbor preferred to lean in my direction whenever the person sitting in front of her obstructed her view of the screen. A glimmer of interest crept into the afternoon. But still, how little desirable this fine woman was! She was talking to herself. I thought of the empty evening ahead of me, of the day that was to follow, of the one after that. My neighbor leaned toward me once again. She started laughing. Then it occurred to me that this woman might be one of those defenseless beings who refuse nothing. Wrinkled and grey-haired though she was, I had an objective. She was still laughing. Anyhow, time was passing more quickly. But what if I was wrong, what if she was really laughing instead of laughing nervously? I brought out a suggestive remark. She continued to laugh. Was I going to place my hand on hers, despite my distaste? For a few moments I wondered about this. I reached out my hand. My neighbor abruptly recoiled. Unbelievable. It was I who aroused distaste in her!

  "What's wrong with you?" she asked me curtly.

  Then, without another word, she got up and left.

  I had not reached the end of my troubles. On the 14th of December I received another letter from Richard. He postponed our get-together until Monday the 24th. He might as well have said that he did not want to see me anymore. After this the Christmas and New Year's holidays would serve as new pretexts. I believed a well thought out plan could be discerned behind all these cancellations. Richard's aim was that on my own I abandon the idea of seeing him. Anger contorted my face. It is a dreadful thing to discover one day that you are at somebody's mercy. Was there a single blunder I had not committed in order to wind up there? I felt I had no one to blame but myself, and this only increased my anger. I had to do something to find relief. Only the wretched telephone lay to hand. I dialed the Europe exchange. But instead of asking for Richard, as I had done the last time, without even inquiring whether he was in I simply left a message that I would be coming on the 17th, that I had nothing else scheduled for then.

  The next day I went to Châtillon. A man of my sort doesn't reach the middle of his life without dragging his victims along with him. A man of my sort is weak. My victims! So am I an executioner? I had suffered. I was suffering. Today I continue to suffer. However, the harm I have done has always been reparable, while that which has been done to me ... I have not asked anything unusual from life. I have asked but one thing. It has always been refused me. I have struggled to obtain it, truly struggled. This thing is something my fellow-creatures get without having to seek it. It is neither money, nor friendship, nor glory. It is a place among men, a place of my own, a place they would acknowledge as mine without envying it, because there wouldn't be anything enviable about it. It would not be distinguishable from their own. It would be respectable, that and nothing more.

  I was on my way to see a woman I had once loved, or rather whom I had known intimately. I had not been any more able to end things definitively with Germaine than with Berthe, so that our old, our very old connection still retained a semblance of life. Seventeen years had gone by since I had left Germaine. She had heaped insults and curses upon me. And I had gone back to see her. I wanted at the same time to be free and forgiven. She imagined that I was weak. Maybe I was, after all. Then she believed she was destined to play the heroine's role. Without deviating from her hard-heartedness, she suddenly pretended to feel sorry for me. She allowed me to drop by from time to time. The memory just now came to me of one appalling afternoon when she had invited friends over to meet me. How strange I had found the kindness everyone had displayed!

  So I was going out to Châtillon. Oh, the comfort a little trip affords! I took the tram at porte d'Orléans. The weather was cold. The sky was blue. The usual cheerlessness of the flower sellers at the Vanves cemetery was no longer there. You could see into the leafless gardens, and you discovered the hidden benches. I felt happy. The tram seemed possessed of a freedom upon its pre-set course, and I did not have the feeling, as in Paris, that it took too long to get moving again. I was no longer attached to the handful of streets making up a neighborhood. Into my head popped the silly idea of returning in a little while on some one or other of the outer-circle main lines, by way of Saint-Cloud, or the Gare du Nord. Ah, how sweet it would be to set off without money, without purpose and head for our undoing instead of continuing to live in degradation!

  In Châtillon I downed two glasses of wine at some refreshment bar opposite the railway station. I wasn't inclined to turn up before noon. It seemed to me that the sky was clouding over, sparkling though the day was. I sensed that I must wait until I was on my way back in order to rediscover the delights I had felt on the way here.

  I had not come to Châtillon without a purpose. From five o'clock in the morning when I woke up (as I frequently did when I had trouble falling asleep the previous night) to the time I actually got out of bed, Richard had been on my mind. Then I had an odd idea. Why couldn't I ask Germaine's son to write a letter requesting on his own account what his mother had been for so long after me to do for him? I would show Richard the piece of paper. But, actually, would I? When you got down to it, did I not despise these miserable tricks? I was a man, wasn't I, notwithstanding my shabby behavior? After all, did it matter to me what Richard might decide to do?

  Germaine was not expecting me. I caught her looking a sight. This wasn't the first time. In the beginning I had marvelled when she hadn't slipped off on one excuse or another in order to get into some different clothes and fix up her face. I did not suspect that she derived a strange satisfaction from appearing thus to her disadvantage. Then it came to me that this was her way of making me understand that she had ceased to feel anything for me at all.

  She greeted me cordially. I should say that however great her animosity against me, she always counted, whenever I visited, upon some indefinable reversal of the situation, some unforeseen gift. So aware of this had I become that instinctively, once inside the door, the first words I spoke were to announce that there was nothing new. She would conceal her disappointment behind the extra work I was the occasion of. She opened cupboard doors, asked me to move aside. I was, instantly, mixed up in all her domestic occupations, without the slightest consideration, without her showing the slightest embarrassment, as if it would have been the height of absurdity to shield me from any everyday unseemliness after what I had done.

  Just as we sat down at table, her son appeared. He was a tall young man wearing knickerbockers and a short leather jacket with a zipper. His simplicity and his healthiness were such a pleasant surprise! He was wholesome, to use a word his mother was fond of. He was planning to enter an agricultural school. Not for one moment did it puzzle him that I was neither his father, nor his brother, nor his uncle, nor his cousin.

  Germaine touched his tie. His sturdy neck sat on broad shoulders. His mother glanced at me. She seemed to be telling me that her son would be able to defend her if need be. For meanness this unspoken allusion to her son's physical strength outdid even the poverties so complacently displayed before me.

  I had taken off my overcoat, with re
luctance. Wouldn't it have been more sensible, in such a house, to take off nothing at all, to keep standing, to retain one's freedom of movement? In a café did I not always pay as soon as the drinks came so as not to have to wait, so as not to be detained? Lunch lived up to what preceded. Germaine set the pots and pans on the table, asked me to pass them afterward.

  What had I come looking for here? A letter I could avail myself of? No.

  I felt uncomfortable calling upon Richard before the date he had specified. Anger had led to my decision. I had now regained my self-control.

  I rang the bell without hesitation. No valid reason stood in the way of paying him this visit.

  The maid left me in the vestibule. Would Richard see me? I could hear the sounds of doors opening and closing, of comings and goings. I had thought that never again would I act on an impulse. Yet was it not an impulse that had brought me here? Suddenly I felt several distinct rivulets of sweat under my armpits. It had just become apparent to me that something had happened in order that I be there, that, as I had believed deep down, my fears were not exaggerated.

  A few minutes later, the maid reappeared. She bade me follow her. She led me into a salon. Richard was there waiting for me. As soon as he perceived me, he strode toward me.

  "How is it that you are here today?"

  "You mean you weren't expecting me?"

  By feigning surprise I was hoping to side-track him. Naive exclamations of this sort had enabled me to go over well with many people. I used to think they were deliberate. But they weren't, for though they work to my detriment nowadays, they still keep emerging from my mouth.

  "I didn't let you know, that's true, but it's been such a long time since we've seen each other!"

  "You think so, do you?"

  "Yes."

  "Has the time seemed long? You couldn't get on without me any longer?"

  "Yes."

  "And you arrive at noon, for lunch. Very well then, you'll have lunch with us. It will be charming."

  He left the room.

  "I've let my wife know. She's most delighted to see you," he told me when a little later he came back to get me.

  We had been sitting at the table for ten minutes or so when all at once Richard got up and left the room.

  "Don't take offence," his wife said, "Richard is very on edge at the moment."

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. You must take my word that nothing's wrong."

  But on seeing him return I became frightened. There was an unsettled intensity in the gaze he fixed upon me. Instead of quieting him, absence had worsened the state he was in. So it had not been to hide it from me that he had left the room. This simple fact alarmed me. For a moment he remained motionless, his hands on the back of his chair, and then, instead of sitting down, he walked around the table and halted half a pace away from me.

  "Miserable. You are a miserable wretch," he said, advancing his head until there was no space between us.

  I did not flinch. His wife had leapt up. She seized him by the arm and drew him back to his seat.

  "Don't take offence," she repeated.

  My lips had remained parted. I had not moved a muscle. I sensed that so long as I maintained my cataleptic rigidity, I was excused from responding, presumably still stunned by the insult. But it was soon clear to me that I couldn't hold this pose indefinitely. I ought to react. What should I do? Unable to come up with some word, some gesture, I started trembling. Finally I cried: "No, no, no ... I won't accept this . . . It's outrageous. You must apologize. I demand an apology."

  Now it was Richard's turn to become immobile. He looked at me without seeming to understand the reason for my agitation. No regret could be made out in his face. Yet, from certain prolonged lowerings of his eyelids, I sensed he was gradually regaining his composure. His clenched hands opened as though in response to heat.

  "Do you feel better?" his wife asked him.

  He bowed his head several times.

  "You must rest yourself."

  After having had him sit down she then wanted to make him get up.

  "Let me be. I'm not through."

  Once more he fastened his strange gaze upon me, then, this time without anger, he repeated: "You're a miserable person."

  I turned toward Madame Dechatellux. Through a signal she conveyed to me that I must above all not lose my temper. I replied with another signal that meant that what she was asking was beyond my powers. Then, as if, despite everything, I desired to obey her, I held my tongue.

  Richard had turned back into a human being.

  "It's over with, isn't it?" his wife asked.

  "Yes."

  "What possessed you?"

  "I don't know."

  She was so overwhelmingly solicitous that it seemed this insult had more consequences for him than for me. I stood up.

  "Sit down."

  "What's this? You're asking me to stay?"

  "Please accept my apology. I don't understand what got into me. You know perfectly well I cannot really think the things I said. It would be incomprehensible after all the tokens of affection I've given you. Isn't that so, Edith?"

  "You haven't been in top form lately."

  "Indeed, I haven't been feeling well these past few days. All of a sudden, I had this need to tell you that you were a miserable person. I would have said the same to my best friend had he happened to be sitting here. It's perhaps because you came though I had asked you not to come."

  A half-hour later I took my leave. He saw me to the door.

  "Forget the whole thing. Come back next Monday as I asked you to do in my letter. In any case, you can count on me. Tomorrow, I'll send you the money."

  I went back to the hotel. There were roses in the office. I stopped to look at and smell them. "I'm a miserable wretch!" Was it possible? I had rarely been insulted in my lifetime, but on every occasion it had happened, I had drawn from it some salutary lesson. "Maybe I am miserable."

  Neither the next day, nor the one after that, nor on any of the following days did the money reach me. When an affair is settled after a scene like the one that had just transpired, the carrying out of what has been agreed to seems merely a question of detail, and it is difficult to lodge a claim. I could not believe that Richard would have had the duplicity to count on this scruple. Were we back again in the business of the previous week?

  On December 24th I returned to Richard's. An incessant stir was causing the doors to tremble. I had barely sat down in the waiting room when there was a ringing of the telephone, shortly followed by that of the door bell. Several times the maid entered the room where I was sitting. First, she came to fetch a chair, then, stored high up in a cupboard, some chinaware which Madame Dechatellux probably reserved for company. Next, in the lower part of this same cupboard she put away a bundle sewn up in a piece of canvas. I learned later that inside were old linen sheets intended for a nursing home. For a few minutes the door of a small office adjoining the consultation room stood open. I saw a man, seated, alone, dangling his hat between his parted knees. In the room the overhead light was on even though it was daytime. I had been waiting for ten minutes when a thin, commonly dressed woman was shown in. She was holding a sheet of paper in her hand. Noon struck. She sat down across from me, visibly intimidated. Almost at the same moment, the sounds of voices reached us. I recognized Richard's. He was ushering out a patient. On noticing that the connecting door was ajar, he pushed it shut. Nevertheless, he had time to see me, but on his face there was nothing to indicate that he knew me. The sounds of voices now yielded to an extraordinary murmur. The gravity words take on when all you can hear is their sound! Then the man I had glimpsed sitting with his hat between his knees emerged through the doorway of the small office. I looked at him. Now he was holding his hat in his hand like any visitor. He had a white beard and, like many men of that age (he must have been in his sixties), you sensed about him a rather startling disregard for appearances below the waist—uncreased trousers, cracked sho
e-leathers—while the haircut, the face, the detachable collar, the cravat formed a studied ensemble. He took a seat between the newcomer and myself, clucking his tongue, blowing his nose, smoothing down his moustache, without concern for my presence or for the lady's.

  Suddenly, the door opened again, and Richard called the old man. He sprang to his feet with an astonishing agility. This time Richard gave me a friendly nod. I thought he was calling me as well. I was preparing to join him, without my neighbor's somewhat obsequious briskness. The idea that Richard had arranged for me and the other man to meet shot through my mind, and I felt a brief joy. But I was mistaken. Richard stopped me with a gesture. Two further patients were shown into the waiting room. They were a relatively young married couple. It was clearly the man who was unwell. I was moved by the care with which the woman had her husband sit down, as well as by the apologetic smile she directed at me, as though she had disturbed me. The man looked cadaverous. His cheeks seemed sucked inward. My eyes remained fastened on this couple. Then I noticed something that moved me even more than the woman's devotion. It was how a person's continual presence places a blindfold over our eyes. This woman did not see the state her husband was really in. She kept repeating to him—and I felt it wasn't in order to reassure him but because she herself was convinced—that he was cured, that but for the urging of a certain Doctor Bodin or Baudhouin she would never have brought him to see Dechatellux.

  These preliminaries decidedly did not bode well. A quarter of an hour later Madame Dechatellux called me discreetly. To be the cause, amidst all these agitations, of a supplementary agitation filled me with embarrassment. It was obvious that in order to receive me Richard's wife had interrupted her pursuits once she could safely get away for a moment. However certain overlooked details remained, and every so often she would absent herself. During these minutes of waiting I could not help but think about the contrast that showed between Richard's life and my own. To devote oneself this way to mankind, to relieve its woes, to dedicate oneself sincerely and with all one's strength to such a noble task—this was far greater than to live in idleness. Richard would get up every morning at five. One hour later he would go to communion. Then he would visit needy patients, to all and sundry disbursing financial aid, medical attention, advice. He never sat down to lunch before one-thirty. Then he would continue to see patients. How comforting it must be to be taken up this way by a thousand occupations, to never be alone with oneself! And what joy to know that such a bustling life was not spent in vain!