A Singular Man Read online

  "Go along and see my son and my daughter."

  With each beat my heart felt more and more constricted. I was about to see Denise again. She was there, surrounded by other young men and other young women.

  She spoke hardly a word to me that day. She had been like someone who has made us a promise. "Just wait. The moment hasn't come yet. Do you not trust me?" I had left. On what excuse would I return? I had had firm handshakes from everyone. Would they find seeing me again natural? Would I be the obtuse individual who does not understand that he is in the way? I had thought about Denise. About her father as well. I had not been pleased with him. Was it because he had had to struggle in his youth, because he knew what life was like, because rich and powerful though he was, he missed nothing of what went on in the hearts of lesser people? I preferred Madame Mobecourt, or even Jacqueline.

  A few days later I caught sight of Denise in the great park. Should I speak to her? Should I wait for her to speak to me? Had she seen me? Had it affected her? Superfluous questions, all of them. She was walking along briskly. She felt nothing whatever on seeing me.

  "Are you out for a stroll?" she asked when she came within hailing distance.

  I felt incapable of replying from so far away. I pretended not to hear. Then I assumed a jaunty air. I had a bad habit. I always assumed a jaunty air with people who, while aware of my situation, disregarded it.

  I had to return to Paris. I had to resume my climbing up rue Claude Bernard. I had to present myself anew at the doors of midwives, medical specialists, dealers in gold and gems, and extend discounts in order to induce them to place their ads through me, for I was then an advertising agent, "in publicity," as I used to put it.

  I had just, in a single instant, and thanks to Denise, ridded myself of a vulgar and ridiculous habit: that of looking at the women I wished to please as one looks, in a game, at the partner you want to get to play a certain card.

  There were streets and avenues in the Paris sky, between the white clouds. Denise was in love with me.

  Two years earlier I had the appearance of an injured workman when I would go out marketing in my slippers. Oh, those heaps of daffodils in the stalls! How they gave me the urge to run away! The building on rue du Château-d'Eau was old and dilapidated, despite the Moorish entrance it owed to a one-story bathhouse at the rear of the courtyard. A bedroom and kitchen on the seventh floor at the end of a hall. A divan with drawers underneath, a worn, soiled bedspread. Propped against the pillow, I would spend hours staring at my neighbors' windows.

  Germaine had taken to imitating me. Propped against the pillow, she would also look at the neighbors' windows. Neither one of us was made for this life. Does she still imitate me? I believe so. I have never suffered so much as when I was with this woman. And all those memories of intimacy that remain, and that I do not want to think about! That special word she would say to no one but me!

  As soon as I was able to, I would board the last car of the Montrouge-Gare de l'Est train, the one for second class passengers. And for the price of one stop I would ride to place Saint-Michel. Each time I was reminded that, for the price, it was one of the best rides in Paris. You have pleasant interludes in store for you in the most trying periods. How I liked the young people of my own age whom I saw studying and laughing on the far side of the fountain! I wondered that they did not claim ascendancy over me, that they accepted me into their group as if I were one of their own—I, who did the cooking for a woman I loathed. I loitered along boulevard Saint-Michel, stopped in front of bookstore windows. On autumn evenings especially, amidst the bustle that coincides with the reopening of school, in the sadness the rain brings on, I would be invaded by despair. I would look at the girls, so beautiful and so free. I dreamt of having a room on rue du Sommerard, rue Monsieur-le-Prince, rue Casimir Delavigne. Isn't that where I should have been living? But then I had to cross back to the other side of the Seine. And at Châtelet, cut off from the Latin Quarter by the court buildings, police headquarters, Notre Dame, the Hôtel-Dieu, I would feel lost. I would walk back up boulevard Sébastopol. The first store was a bicycle shop. Then came Damoy's, Félix Potin's. "If one evening"—I would sing to myself—"you come upon a blonde as you're strolling along ..."

  I would go back to my room. Well, I was at peace there. Dinner, the evening hours, sleep, they all made the next day feel so far away. I had a respite. I could not lose any more ground. Once the day is done, the world is a better place. The struggle is interrupted. Those who do not participate in it no longer suffer on account of their inaction.

  How profound can be the impression left by short spaces of time!

  This life had lasted only seven months . . . Why had I suffered so because of my poverty, suffered from the dinners we used to have with a retired person who lived behind place de la République, from that interminable day spent with Germaine's mother, from hospital visits to a tubercular little girl, from my furunculosis (to be sure, the boils were mine), from a thousand such things?

  Denise came to see me in the Gobelins only once. It was a sweltering day. I had taken off my jacket and I felt a little less poor. I was not ashamed of my room. Each poverty has a particular character. That of mine was to appear temporary. In this way it seemed less ugly than others. I remained a man with some fight left in him, still capable of rebelling. However, by mutual agreement, we never subsequently spoke of this first visit, even long afterward.

  At the far end of a private garden, a stone balustrade like the one in the Luxembourg.

  Lights from the house were gleaming through the bushes.

  Muted music.

  It was like a dream. My timidity had just evaporated. Inside the faint circle of moon gleamed a slender crescent. Three days ago it had been a thread. Denise and I were by ourselves. I did not desire her. No disappointment could await me. It was the most beautiful day of my life. Would such happiness last? Denise, for her part, was in real life. She was really admiring the sky. She was really smelling the flowers. She was really quivering, and I, in the meantime, was filled with elation over not desiring her.

  She wanted to go back inside. I had not dared to kiss her, but I had dared beg her to stay. I lost all restraint. I allowed immoderate feelings to appear.

  "We should go back inside," she repeated.

  Nobody had noticed that we were gone. We could very well have committed wickedness, since while it is being consummated it is of no interest to anyone.

  A few days later I received a note from Madame Dechatellux inviting me to come to lunch. I did not know how to reply. I stiffened. I was wild with joy. I accepted.

  Everything transpired very simply. Denise's mother was very gracious toward me. When I got back, I burst into tears. I had wearied everyone with my spectatorial manner. At the table I had wanted to make up for it. I had made fun of that spectatorial manner. Then I had made fun of myself.

  Paris was deserted. The greengrocers and the milk-shops had no customers. A chilliness reigned there, and the tile floors were damp.

  I was living behind the Bon Marché. On the ground floor of my building was a shop run by an eccentric man who, unwilling to bow to common custom, had gathered within a single business everything towards which he had a leaning, even laxity, for this store opened and closed at impossible hours. I could not have told whether he was an antique dealer, a cabinetmaker, or an upholsterer.

  My house was of good appearance. The height and dark shadows of the entry's arched ceiling, the stained glass, blue and rust-colored, of the fragile inner door, the ornamental shrubs in the courtyard, all gave a strange impression of a place neither public nor private.

  I climbed stairs. At each floor larger amounts of sunlight came in. Everything gleamed, giving off a pleasant smell of floor-polish. A thick tasseled cord hung alongside each door. It is thus the objects surrounding us ought to be. They must be independent of what is going on within us, they must abide no matter what happens, they must be like the prescriptions of a ceremony and say to u
s: see how it is wise to behave with human nature, without which where would we be heading?

  My mind was not on Denise. I was weary. The fight for attention, the continual fear of having displeased, watching your every step, justifying yourself, defending yourself, answering—how tiring it all is! A feeling of well-being, of security, of confidence fills me the very moment I give up this effort.

  The shutters were open, the bed made. The casement windows, both open, resembled a doll's outflung arms. My clothes had been hung up. The washstand, both marble top and shelf, had been tidied. It looked like the room of a serious young man. No softness anywhere about, or rather yes, a little bit of softness, that of the chambermaid who knows her tenant is a gentleman living alone. She had hung up my ties, but the emptied ashtray hadn't been wiped.

  I placed my suitcase on the bed, and without doing anything else, I went out again. This room meant nothing to me, and yet I had had to return to it. I am attached to whatever affects me. On the sinking ship I would hesitate over parting with my jacket, my shoes, I would think for a moment of returning to my cabin for my . . . what, I wonder.

  Now I was outside. I was in need neither of rest nor of acclimatization. It did not seem to me that I had just got home.

  Denise must have been pleasantly surprised when she paid me a visit the next day. I was forever complaining. Now she would stop believing me. This house was altogether suitable. Why did I always see ugliness where there wasn't any? Denise was perhaps right. I might well have that awful failing of imagining that everything in any way connected with me must be concealed.

  Denise had feared something. She felt relieved. Beginning at the entrance, the concièrge, who had served in the finest buildings, must have made a good impression on her.

  Denise did not close the door.

  "I am very glad you live here. I shan't deny that I was a little afraid after what you'd told me."

  I gave the room the sort of glance women give themselves, imagining that I was seeing it for the first time. All at once I discovered what Denise was pleased by. This was not a hotel room.

  I was from Compiègne. Denise was not forgetting it. Whatever I might have done, ties yet bound me to my town. Denise was anxious that this be so. She was truly admirable. I remembered all my shortcomings, all she had put up with because of me, my angry outbursts, my prickliness, the ready-made speeches about my dignity, about the barrier separating us, my silent spells. She was there, modest, poor. Only her parents were rich. She herself owned nothing. She was like me. Later on, if she wound up in possession of a certain amount of money, would we not have acquired it together since we had loved each other beforehand? Such was the couple we formed in her mind. And what if she were wrong? If, despite this complicity, my social inferiority caused me distress!

  "Why did you come today?" I asked.

  Perhaps Denise did not love me. She was coming to see me like any other friend. We had not known one another for so very long. My God, why had all these doubts to be buzzing in my head? By dint of desiring I had worn out my capacity to desire. All that was left was me, in this room, facing Denise, at three in the afternoon, in the month of July. I was calm. Several times, Denise asked me whether I did truly wish her to leave. My answer was yes. She left. Looking back upon them from a distance, these scenes torment me. How could I have been so light-headed? Thinking back on them, I wince still more at my mercurial disposition than at my foolishness. At present I was alone, through my own will. This was truly the limit. In reality, I am honest, scrupulous. The idea that I might appear self-interested lay behind this peculiarity. But I am self-interested. I am unable not to be. There is nobody in this world who is not. Friends might criticize Denise for loving me, but they did not know the whole story.

  Mired in the evil humor famous for having sprung from good feelings, I set out for the railroad station. I had meant to seek forgiveness. Denise was so happy, and I so sad. She would understand. Oh, it was appalling, all of it. Nothing lasted, neither anger nor remorse. Allowing Denise to love me under such conditions was to do her harm. I realized this all of a sudden, and I thought about going back to my room. Nothing is stable when you are suffering. How are you supposed to love, to make yourself loved? How not be unhappy in order to arouse sympathy? How not arouse fear? How surround yourself with all the necessary conditions? What if, at the last minute, Denise's family refused their consent? What would we do? What if it was unwilling to aid the turncoat! One day Denise had told me: "They can't do that." But what if they did it? "Oh, let me never find myself in a situation where I am forced to persuade, insist, beg!" I murmured. For all my efforts to protect myself, I sensed I was heading toward that humiliation. "We are going to be dependent on the goodwill of others. We are going to be obliged to do nothing that might displease."

  I come to the station. I shall not ask to be forgiven. I shall tell the truth. But was I so much to be pitied? That story of an abandoned boy, an unhappy youth, I was weary of it. How I wished it might not have been mine! How proud I would have been of another past, even a worse one!

  I strolled in front of the Gare du Nord. There were still a good many wounded veterans in the crowd. I did not have a rendezvous. I had to catch Denise as she went by, stop her, as I had stopped so many people. It was five minutes before six. It occurred to me that I had long ago begun saying that it was five before the hour when I had narrowly avoided something. At last Denise appeared. She was accompanied by a friend, Solange Vibot. I felt incapable of accounting for myself. I was on edge, I laughed too hard, I talked too loud. Denise looked at me and smiled. No sign on her face of ill-feeling. She had forgotten about me in the course of the afternoon. It was a sort of pretending in order that the time might feel longer when next she thought of me, and her forgiveness easier when next she saw me.

  "Let's forget about all that," she said, thereby rendering my explanations pointless.

  She thought that if I had spells of bad temper it was altogether excusable. Later on, when I would be leading a normal existence, she was confident I would change.

  The minutes passed. All at once, she asked me to accompany her back to Compiègne. Denise would have these sudden upwellings of kindness. When I was the object of them, my joy would be boundless. But sometimes a child playing in the street or a poor old lady were also their beneficiaries. I would then undertake to temper these impulses. This was not out of jealousy, but because of embarrassment provoked by their disproportion. Pleading looks would then be transferred to me. They knew these impulses were exaggerated. They hoped however that I would not check them. I would turn my head away. Afterward, when we were alone, I would give Denise a lecture. And I would feel that I was vile.

  What had Solange Vibot thought? It was evident that I was loved despite my least attractive thoughts and gestures. The sort of man I wished to be was truly the farthest one from Denise's mind. The one she loved was a man who did not deserve any love at all. For me there was something comforting in this. This man wasn't such a little fellow after all! I accepted the invitation to Compiègne. Let's let this little fellow live, let's leave him to his happiness. Albeit little, he is perhaps bigger than many another.

  Then I reconsidered my acceptance. The same old habit of backing off from my initial impulse. You possess nothing, you live by yourself, you have no home to go to, yet it always seems it requires much thought before you set off. But Denise did not notice my wavering, and I yielded.

  Denise and Solange sat down side by side. I had interrupted a conversation. It picked up again. The fire I had been enveloped in as I boarded the train had gone out. I sat quietly. I sensed it would revive shortly, when Solange left us. While they talked, I stewed in my corner amidst my gray thoughts. I had left Paris without any money. Not for a second had I wondered where I would sleep, how I would get back. I still believed that things would take care of themselves, even when it was impossible.

  Solange's brother was waiting for us at the station in Compiègne. He was a tall good-lo
oking boy. He was unaware that I had not uttered a word during the whole trip. I did not want him to find out. Of a sudden I began to talk. They listened to me, but I must have lacked naturalness for I soon had the impression they were growing impatient.

  At last Denise and I were alone. Our dispute was genuinely forgotten. It was not because of Solange's presence that Denise had said nothing to me in the way of reproach.

  Trimmed shrubbery surrounds the Albert Dechatellux property, hiding the basement windows. Four lightning rods. Not one hint of a fruit tree, but pathways, lawns, spreading oaks. Grill work separates it, not just from the street, but from the adjoining gardens.

  I had needed coaxing. I did not wish to intrude upon them. Finally, as I am wont to do, I had given in. I was therefore about to find myself amidst Denise's family. The chief thing now was not to disappoint. Questions would be put to me. Denise reassured me. "Everybody's very nice," she told me. She believed that my presence would pass unnoticed. She did not realize that easy relations of that sort make sense only among members of a given family, or among the closest friends. Monsieur Dechatellux already had the attitude of a man who, indirectly, had done much of benefit to me.

  "Have you been here a long time?" Madame Dechatellux asked me without pausing in her knitting, as if some solicitude had stolen into her.

  "We have just this very minute arrived, Madame."

  My reply was accompanied by a respectful bow.

  Was Denise right? I was not interrupting anything, family life was proceeding. They even shut their eyes to the signs announcing the end of the afternoon, for they were not displeased to have me witness the unfolding of their peaceful activities. I must obtain an idea of the gentility of the world I was penetrating into. Oh, it wasn't a satisfaction of pride! The modesty of one and all was sincere. "We are what we are," every mouth seemed to whisper.