Dimanche and Other Stories (12 page)

“I swear to you,” said Albert, “as God is my witness, I would give everything I possess to save you from death or poverty or dishonor, but you’re asking us to deprive ourselves in order to make you unhappy, as well as your wife, your poor children, your mother …”

“We’re prepared to help you,” said Augustin quietly, “but within the limits of reason and decency. For there’s something else you appear to have forgotten: my wife and Alix are sisters. I can’t openly take your side. Only time and patience can unravel a situation as upsetting as this one.”

“Now I understand,” murmured Alain with a painful feeling of humiliation.

He had cried in front of his brothers. He had implored them for help. He had believed in them, implicitly, as in the old days. But it had all been in vain. How quickly they had rallied! How grimly they
defended what was theirs! His loneliness was more bitter, more stifling than ever; and there was no remedy for his failings …

“It’s late,” he said again. “If you agree, say so. If you refuse, say so. But say it at once, at once. I can’t wait.”

“We’re not refusing. But we can’t do more.”

“Fine,” said Alain.

He got up and moved toward the door. Augustin stood in his way.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going home. Where do you expect me to go?”

“Oh, I see! Well, good night,” Augustin said in a tired, irritable tone. “You’re lucky, being able to go to bed. I’m the one who’s got to wait until the doctor comes. Aren’t you going to say good night to Mother?”

“She’s asleep,” said Alain in a hoarse voice. “Good night!”

He left. Their mother, meanwhile, was awake and had been listening to the muffled sound of their quarrel. She heard Alain’s footsteps fading away, then Augustin and Albert coming nearer. They entered her room on tiptoe.

“Good night, Mama. Do you have everything you need?”

“What’s wrong, children? What were you talking about? What did Alain want?”

“Nothing, Mama, nothing at all! There’s nothing to worry about; don’t upset yourself.”

“Are you angry, Albert? Are you, Augustin?”

“Angry? Of course not! Try to sleep, go back to sleep. We’re waiting for the doctor.”

The doctor arrived and reassured them. Their mother was better; she was going to recover. Plump Josephine came in when they had all gone.

“Madame is better tonight? Madame won’t be worried anymore?”

She did not reply. She shut her eyes and listened to the silence in the flat, to the slow footsteps of the nurse as she prepared her black coffee for the night ahead, the long, lonely night. She was no longer worried about being ill. She knew that now she had recovered.

Fraternité

[  BROTHERHOOD  ]

HE WENT BRIEFLY INTO THE DESERTED FIRST-CLASS
waiting room; the stoves were lit, but he could feel a cold draft coming up through the thin floorboards. He went back outside. The station was very small, surrounded by bare fields. It was an icy October day: a faint pink glow was fast disappearing from the sky, for summer time had ended the day before and the clocks had gone back. He walked up to a bench under the gabled roof, hesitated, then sat down. He wished now he had listened to Florent, his driver, and spent the night in town. The hotel hadn’t been that dirty … Now he had to wait on the empty platform, and then crawl along until evening in some horrible local train … He wouldn’t get to the Sestres’ until after eight o’clock. The car had smashed into a pylon and was unusable. He shouldn’t be driving
anymore; he was worn out, and his reflexes were slow. It was a miracle he’d gotten away without being hurt. He hadn’t had time to see the danger, and he could have died. Afterward he had pulled himself together enough to conceal his fear from Florent and had managed not to display any emotion. At least, he hoped so! Now he was shivering … perhaps from the cold. He dreaded the open air and the wind.

He was a thin, frail, hunched man with silver hair; his narrow face had a yellowish tinge; his dry skin looked starved of nourishment; his nose was excessively long and pointed; his lips, also dry, seemed parched by a thousand-year-old thirst, an affliction passed on from one generation to the next. “My nose, my mouth, the only specifically Jewish traits I’ve kept.” He gently cupped his hands over his thin, almost translucent ears, which were quivering like a cat’s; they were particularly sensitive to the cold. He tightly fastened the collar of his coat, made from the best English wool, dark, thick, and soft. Yet he didn’t move. This deserted station platform, its lights almost invisible against the bright evening dusk, this solitude and sadness held an inexpressible charm for him. He was a man who took a deep and perverse pleasure in melancholy, in regrets and bitterness, too clearheaded—
self-conscious
, he said—to believe in happiness.

He looked impatiently at the time. Not even five o’clock … He felt for the cigarette case in his chest
pocket but immediately let his hand drop. He smoked too much; he had palpitations, insomnia. He sighed. He was rarely ill, but his heightened senses, acutely conscious of any pain, were alert to the slightest twinge, to every movement his body made, to his blood’s ebb and flow; rarely ill, but he had a weak throat and a delicate liver; his heart was tired and his circulation bad. Why? He had always been sober, prudent, and moderate in all things. Ah! So prudent, even when he was young, even at the time of his blind, unforgettable folly … He didn’t miss his youth. It had been uneventful. At the time he had felt only the natural sorrows inherent in the human condition: his parents’ death, disappointments in love or work, nothing comparable to the pain caused by the death of his wife ten years before. He knew his family was surprised that his grief had lasted for so long. In fact, he had married Blanche without love and their union had been placid and lukewarm, but he was the kind of man who was faithful. A home, with its warmth and lamplight, that feeling of stability and peace in and around him: that’s what he had sought, that’s what he had loved, that’s what he had lost when he lost Blanche. For him there would never be another woman. He was not a man who found love easily: he was too reserved, too touchy, too shy. “A coward,” he thought. He lived as if everything were conspiring to rob him of life and happiness. In the depths of his heart he felt contrite and humiliated; he was constantly anxious, timid as a
rabbit … And then, an hour ago, on the road, another minute would have meant the end of all his worries. “I always said that car was no good. And it was a heavy lunch. I was sleepy, had no energy; my reactions were slow.” What, exactly, had he eaten? Some pheasant, a mushroom omelette … what else? A bit of brie … “It was too heavy for me. Eggs don’t agree with me. Ah! This sedentary existence, at my age! I’m fifty years old. From one end of the year to the next I get barely a month of fresh air—the rest of the time it’s the bank, home, or the club.”

Once again he thought that, as soon as he could, he would stop working and be able to live more in the country. Gardening, golf … Golf? He imagined feeling the wind stinging his face on a day like today, on a golf course … Of course he’d hate it! Of course he knew equally well that he hated country walks, sports, riding, cars, and hunting … He was happy only at home, alone or with his children, safe under his own roof, safe from human beings. He didn’t like people. He didn’t like society. Yet he had always been welcomed everywhere and greeted with friendship and goodwill. In his younger days, some charming women had loved him. Why? Why? It always seemed to him that he hadn’t shown enough affection, enough tenderness. How he had made Blanche suffer at the beginning of their marriage, asking her, “Are you happy? Not just in your heart but in your whole being? Do I make you happy?

Completely? Uniquely?” His own heart throbbed with frustration. The strangest thing was that everyone thought him so self-possessed, so calm. He sometimes used to think that only extraordinary good looks, fame, or genius could have made him happy, quenched his thirst for love. But he had no exceptional gifts. Nevertheless he was rich, comfortably settled in life, happy. Happy? How could anyone be happy without absolute peace of mind? And who could have peace of mind these days? The world was so unstable. Tomorrow might bring disaster, ruin, or poverty. He had never been poor. His father had been comfortably off, and he himself was rich. He had never known need or dread of what the next day would bring. Yet he had always had this fear and anguish inside him, always, always, taking the strangest and most grotesque forms … He would wake in the middle of the night, shaking, fearing that something was going to happen, had happened, that everything would be taken away from him, that his life was as unstable as scenery that was about to collapse and reveal he knew not what abyss.

When the last war began, he thought that was what he had been waiting for, had even expected. He had been a soldier, a conscientious one, carrying out his duties punctually and patiently, as he did everything. After a few months he had been sent back behind the lines; he had a weak heart. After the war, life was easy; his business affairs flourished. But there was still this
anxiety, this latent worry that poisoned his life. Such anguish. His health wasn’t good, for a start, and then there were the children. Ah! The children. His elder daughter was married. Was she happy? He had no idea. Nobody ever told him anything. And then there was the financial crisis and ever-increasing taxes, business getting more difficult and surely soon disastrous? Political uncertainty? … He was one of those people who, after every speech given by this or that politician or dictator, would visualize war not in the next month or the following year, but tomorrow, immediately. Yet in conversation he never allowed himself to give in to panic, as his rich bourgeois colleagues did. However, it was all very odd: even while they predicted the most appalling disasters, they somehow appeared to remain in good health, stayed cheerful, and did not either lose a wink of sleep or forgo a single meal. He was the only one who was eaten up inside and worried sick. He was the only one to believe that misfortune could strike him personally, whereas for the others misfortune was a ghost without substance, a shadow. They referred to it all the time but didn’t believe in it. He was the only one who did! And everyone around him said, “Christian Rabinovitch? The steadiest and calmest of men.”

Now and again the wind was icy. The thought of this hunting party at the Sestres’ was hateful. But he had to go … He had to see his son, Jean-Claude, and the young Sestres girl with his own eyes. He sighed heavily. He
was slow to admit what truly hurt him, what really pained him—it was one of his defining characteristics. As a result, when he was preoccupied by something he stayed awake for hours, his heart thumping, brooding about some unpleasant encounter or some tedious journey. He hated stations, ports, steamships … Better not to go anywhere, better to live and die in his own little corner of the world. Then, toward morning, it would be as if an invisible dam deep in his heart had finally given way, and a real wave of distress would unfold, rising to the surface, stifling him. Well … now … it was all about his son; it was always about him. How he loved him! He loved his two daughters: the elder married, a mother, the younger one still in short skirts. But this son of his, who had given him more sorrow than joy … so lightweight, anxious, and dissatisfied, a brilliant student, his studies soon abandoned. Frivolous? No. Dissatisfied, that was it … dissatisfied. And now he was in love. He wanted to marry the Count of Sestres’s daughter. Ah! How difficult. His race … “He won’t be happy, I know it. He won’t be happy.” In any case, would Sestres give his consent? Or insult Jean-Claude, and himself? His heart was bleeding already, but he would cut off his own two hands to prevent the marriage! They wouldn’t be happy, Jean-Claude and this girl. They could never truly understand each other. They would be united in the flesh, but each would have a solitary and an unfulfilled heart. But what could he do? He was sure that no
one would listen to him. His children already thought of him as someone from another age, an old fogy. He was one of those men who aged quickly. No—were born older than their years, already burdened with experience. Ah, why did Jean-Claude want to get married? Wasn’t he happy? Not a moment’s peace on this earth!

He looked at the time. He had been brooding so much, yet only twenty minutes had elapsed. Such a gloomy autumn, such a wretched evening … It was then that he noticed that a man was sitting next to him on the bench: a badly dressed, thin, ill-shaven man with dirty hands. He was looking after a child. The child kept going to look at the rails, fascinated by them. He was wearing an ugly, worn-out little coat and a cap, and he had big ears, curved like French horns, on both sides of his head; his wrists and red hands stuck out of sleeves that were far too short for him. He moved about restlessly. Then he turned toward the bench; his huge, liquid black eyes, which dominated his thin face, seemed to jump from one object to another. He took a step forward and, even though the track was completely empty, the man leapt anxiously from his seat, picked him up, and came back to sit down, holding him tightly against his chest. He saw that the eyes of his prosperously dressed neighbor were on the child, and he immediately gave him a nervous smile.

“Could I ask you the time?”

He spoke with a hoarse, foreign accent, which distorted his words.

Rabinovitch, without replying, pointed out the clock above their heads.

“Oh yes, I’m so sorry! Only twenty past five? My God, my God! The train isn’t due until six thirty-eight. Forgive me … are you waiting for the Paris train, too?”

“No.”

Christian stood up; at once the man started muttering, “Monsieur, if you would be good enough … it’s the child. He’s been ill, and the third-class waiting room isn’t heated. Please, could you allow us to follow you into the first-class waiting room? If we go in with you, they’ll let us wait there.”

As he spoke, his features moved comically fast, so that he looked almost like a monkey. It wasn’t just his lips that moved, but his hands as well, and the lines in his face, and his shoulders. His black eyes, feverishly bright like the child’s, seemed to leap from one thing to another, turning away, searching anxiously for something they could not see, would never see.