Life Embitters (19 page)

Marianne was fond of using the adjective “small.” This mania for adjectives made her sound very French. She’d talk about small income, small savings, a small coffee, a small supper, a small trip, a small dress. She described everything as
petit
.

“Donne-moi une petite goutte, mon petit chéri,”
she’d say when her husband was dunking a sugar lump in his glass of cognac.

In our country everybody inflates, ups the ante. That lady championed the diminutive. Initially, accustomed as I was to our macro manner, I thought she was suffering from a shortsightedness that brought with it petty,
rampant selfishness – selfishness that would provoke cruelty if her small pleasures and well-being were ever threatened. However, later, when I’d thought things through, I realized that everyone defends things that are infinitely small, even if they describe them as large, as they do in our country. In our neck of the woods people speak of this or that as being big, because things are smaller than anywhere else. That’s perfectly understandable.

I still remember the outcry that went up in this couple’s room the day Monsieur Henri opened a socialist newspaper for the first time in the presence of his good lady,
L’Humanité
, to be precise. Socialism had been dancing around the dues collector’s head for some time – supposing that socialism could ever dance one way or the other – but he’d never dared open his daily paper before in the presence of Marianne. In the course of my conversations with him, I noticed that he was familiar with the vocabulary of socialist dialectics. On the day of that row I heard him say to his wife in a gruff, churlish voice: “You are a contradictory, paradoxical cell …”

“Talk plainly …!”

“One must accept scientific terminology. If not, one immediately risks appearing to be ridiculous …”

“You’ll lose your post, Henri!” she replied sobbing. “Don’t you appreciate what it is to possess an
octroi
in Paris? We’ll be thrown into poverty …”

“Will you be so good as to shut up? You are not familiar with the experimental method.”

“Think of your family, Henri!”

“Don’t worship false idols, Marianne!”

The result was completely obtuse in respect to the conversation I just noted. On the excuse that socialism might have brought him bad luck, he surrendered to an orgy of order, anxiety over punctuality and a bacchanalian doing of his duties – and needless to say fulfillment from duty done.
The moment came when he had to restrain his efforts, because his superiors found them obscene. Socialism led him to be excessively zealous.

Living so close to such diverse people often made me think about myself and my own make up. After thinking so much about others, it is only reasonable to try to discover how one stands oneself. Whenever I’ve engaged in this exercise – that is often – I’ve found that an impulse has intervened between my mental system and inner self to stop me delving further. When I am observing others, my system performs more or less correctly. When I observe myself, the logic guiding my mechanisms for introspection immediately veer away from central issues to focus on peripheral matters often located far from the center. As soon as I examine, for example, a particular tendency of mine, some rationale will surface to block my self-scrutiny. They are two inseparable, interconnected movements, locked in a devilish game that prevents any kind of enlightenment. These rationales that surface automatically when we attempt to elucidate or clarify any act we commit are always persuasive, plausible, and sufficient unto the day. The logic driving our self-scrutiny, that cold analytical detachment, is immediately erased by the plausibility of these rationales, however vague and symbolic they may be. In the face of this mental turmoil people always appeal to their instinct for self-preservation. The latter is more powerful and efficient in people’s mental lives than in their merely physical activities. Consequently, it is extremely difficult to form a clear idea of oneself. Life unravels in the mental confusion caused by the instinct for self-preservation. Within the natural limits of our imagination and the imperfection that life always brings, we can succeed in getting to know someone else. Self-knowledge is extremely difficult. Analytical detachment is for others. We cannot apply it to ourselves.

We are hugely susceptible to the opinions of others and they bolster our
instinct for self-preservation. When Mlle Georgette said the other day, at an intimate moment – it was summer, the heat was stifling, the barometer in the nearby pharmacy swung low and the first lightning in a dramatic electric storm flashed across the sky – that I seemed to be an upstanding fellow in terms of her experience of life, I immediately thought she was right. Or rather: while Mlle Georgette was delivering her judgment, I was convinced that she was mistaken, that she wasn’t right. However my mental system was immediately swamped by so many arguments and rationales to justify the remark I’d just heard, that within seconds of it being uttered it rang completely true. When one coldly dissects the sentence, its lack of substance, its puerility, hits you between the eyes. To say that someone has a hint of this or that is to say very little. But it makes no difference. Cold detachment is futile, isn’t profitable. We see ourselves enthusiastically, warmly. The rest is of no interest.

What would have happened if she’d given her words the opposite meaning? If she had formulated her sentence in these terms: “You are a worthless two-timer”? We wouldn’t have believed them, and, if we’d wanted Mlle Georgette to express a more favorable opinion of ourselves, we’d have pleaded, “Mademoiselle, I would really like your opinion of me to be closer to reality. Hear me out, I beg you …” And we would have made our confession. Naturally, many factors would have influenced the authenticity of this piece of rhetoric – the weather and many others. I don’t wish to deny,
a priori
, that a genuine confession isn’t possible. I am simply saying that every confession also forms part of our instinct for self-preservation – one of the key ingredients of which is self-esteem – and that every confession is shaped by a burden of watertight, plausible excuses. Thus we are very accepting of the opinions of others, provided they are ones we approve of. If they are not, our level of acceptance is nil and we reject them wholesale.

Our mental confusion is dense and dark. Life is a black hole. To judge by the efforts we make to cling to the wall, we should agree that we find obscurity amusing. Other people are subject to change, but amusing. The distractions one provides oneself are perhaps less interesting, and often of no interest at all. We go through life, not knowing who we are – and that must be why there are so many surprises. Other people, in contrast, are a mine, a mine that proves so inexhaustible we often can’t stand one another. The walls of 145 Boulevard Saint Michel were too thin – thin as a cat’s ear, naturally.

Once we were past Orléans, I went into the corridor. The heat was stifling. What’s more, I’d had to listen to the long story told me by the man opposite. That gentleman had recounted in grisly detail how an excess of caution and fear had led him to lose his fortune. Such tales are quite normal – particularly in France – but most people find them pathetic. I personally dislike the philosophical and moral conclusions that are usually drawn. Nothing could be worse than melancholy generalizations about this world inspired by events on the home front. When I left the compartment, this passenger had just embarked on a series of literary considerations. He would then ride roughshod over the moral or ethical terrain. Then other passengers would say their piece … I stood up, because any conversation in
a train will inevitably create a necessary feeling of contempt among fellow travelers.

The corridor was cloaked in semi-darkness. People were asleep in many compartments and lights had been switched off. There was a dim bluish light in the next-door compartment. I sat on one of those fold-up seats by the window. It was a pitch-black night with not a star in sight. The train was flying along. Every now and then station lights suddenly lit up the coach. Windows would be peopled by fleeting, elongated shapes, brass handrails glinted yellow, luminous pus from the electric glow hurt your eyes, as if the train were crossing a fire.

I lowered the window – to pass the time. The draught blew under my clothes and I shivered with cold. As I was returning to my place, the door to the compartment with the blue light opened. The door was opposite my seat. I heard a
pardon
uttered with obvious surprise. I looked round. A youngish-looking lady was standing in front of me, apparently not knowing what to do. She was carrying three or four items. I invited her to step inside. I watched her lean against the glass preparing to inject three or four drops of perfume into a cigarette. The thin, nickel-plated syringe looked like a surgical instrument. The phial of perfume was soft and misshapen and seemed terribly organic. The juddering of the train meant the needle pierced three cigarettes in a row.

“Do you mind holding this for a moment …?” she asked with a laugh, throwing her head back and handing me a packet of English cigarettes.

“So you like scented tobacco?” I asked, by way of response.

“What do you think?” she replied, averting her gaze and inhaling a few drops of perfume. “It’s the fashion …”

While she injected perfume, I looked at her. She was a twenty-two- or three-year-old woman, and rather tall, blonde, extremely refined, elegant
according to the latest taste, and intriguing. She was a woman one imagined had led a full life. Her eyes were green and her nose pert and teasing, a nose that Parisian women have transformed into a divine
je ne sais quoi
. Moreover, I thought she must surely have a sense of humor. While she was looking me up and down, her eyes quite naturally met mine and I realized that she’d been crying not too long ago. I was fascinated and stared back into her eyes. She noticed and I had no choice but to ask something so as not to seem rude.

“Aren’t you sleepy?”

“No, even if I were, I wouldn’t sleep. I get to my station at two.”

“You’re getting off in Limoges?”

“That’s right.”

She smoked with a mixture of nerves and disgust and shreds of tobacco stuck to her tongue and made her grimace. Her eyes stared into the pitch black outside. If a light shone, she followed it with her eyes. Once the train whistled through a station and she instinctively put her hands over her eyes and looked saddened. I saw her as one of those sensitive bundles of nerves that often hide beneath undulating mother-of-pearl flesh in Paris. As I write these lines, I reflect upon how easily she got under my skin. Now, can anyone be more alluring than a woman whose acquaintance you’ve just made? Then more likely than not it all collapses and she doesn’t seem interesting at all. A first conversation is always delightfully euphoric, and shamelessly oblivious to all else.

“You’re feeling sad …” I said staring at her. “I noticed you’d been crying …”

“Oh, no …” she said, sounding surprised, looking at me, and then looking away. She regained her composure and before I could reply said: “So you want to know if I was crying? You don’t seem the nosey kind …”

“That’s right. I’m not.”

“Not even in a train?” she asked, flashing her pinkish green eyes.

“Perhaps a tiny bit in a train. Long journeys are so boring! They ought to install bars in trains, and poker tables.”

“Or a dance floor.”

“What can I say? I think not. I’m against any kind of sport. People dance so well it’s difficult to relax when you’re looking at them.”

“You’re so vain!”

“Not true. I’m not vain at all, and that’s probably why I’m not interested in women.”

“I don’t understand …”

“It’s obvious enough. Don’t you agree it is vanity that leads men to approach women?”

“So is it vanity that’s making you talk to me now?”

“Absolutely.”

“And nothing else?”

When she asked that, I simply stared at the ceiling; I couldn’t think what to say. For a moment I felt like replying: “I’m talking to you in order to kill time …” but I thought that would have seemed far too brutal. Then, I felt like saying, in tremulous tones: “I was fantastically interested in you; if you are prepared to hear a declaration of love …”

My sense of the ridiculous intervened and swept away my beautiful words. How pitiful and sad.

She probably took pity on me, because she went on to ask, as if nothing was amiss: “And what might the advantages be?”

“There’s the huge pride at a done deal. Above all, you mustn’t mistake the smoke for the fire. Think about pure movement, about love. Love is one of the most ingenuous forms of vanity. We bond …”

“You might just as well say ‘we marry’ …”

“Are you married?”

“Imagine that I am. Go on …”

“Well, we marry to ensure we have a dedicated, understanding, enraptured audience. We always need somebody to listen to us.”

“This is all very convoluted.”

“Explanations of such things are always very convoluted. But don’t you think this is crystal-clear? Can you conceive of a theater without an enthusiastic audience?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing much, really … When we meet a woman who will listen to us we say she is in love with us …”

“Is that all?”

“Well, that she is listening one-hundred percent. Sometimes, she only appears to be listening. The more compliments we receive, the greater the arguments we provoke, the more loved we feel. Love is never a dialogue …”

“So it’s a monologue then?” she asked, laughing sadly.

“True love, absolute love is never anything but an absurdly selfish monologue in the presence of a spectator who takes an interest or who we think takes an interest in the things we are saying …”

“You reduce everything to a spectacle the audience always approves of … and what happens if the audience answers back and speaks her mind?”

“Well, I hardly need tell you that nobody finds it pleasant to be contradicted. What do you expect? We don’t like … I’m talking, in general terms, about people in a good state of health. I’ve sometimes felt pleasure at being annoyed. When I’ve felt like that, it’s because I was sick …”