Nausea (11 page)

My neighbours are silent. After the tart, Mariette serves them prunes and the woman is busy, gracefully laying stones in her spoon. The husband staring at the ceiling, taps out a rhythm on the table. You might think that silence was their normal state and speech a fever that sometimes takes them.

"Where do you want me to get it?"

"Buy some."

I close the book. I'm going out for a walk.

It was almost three o'clock when I came out of the Brasserie vezelise; I felt the afternoon all through my heavy body. Not my afternoon, but theirs, the one a hundred thousand Bouvillois were going to live in common. At this same time, after the long and copious Sunday meal, they were getting up from the table, for them something had died. Sunday had spent its fleeting youth. You had to digest the chicken and the tart, get dressed to go out.

The bell of the Cine-Eldorado resounded in the clear air. This is a familiar Sunday noise, this ringing in broad daylight. More than a hundred people were lined up along the green wall. They were greedily awaiting the hour of soft shadows, of relaxation, abandon, the hour when the screen, glowing like a white stone under water, would speak and dream for them. Vain desire: something would stay, taut in them: they were too afraid someone would spoil their lovely Sunday. Soon, as every Sunday, they would be disappointed: the film would be ridiculous, their neighbour would be smoking a pipe and spitting between his knees or else Lucien would be disagreeable, he wouldn't have a

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decent word to say, or else, as if on purpose, just for today, for the one time they went to the movies their intercostal neuralgia would start up again. Soon, as on every Sunday, small, mute rages would grow in the darkened hall.

I followed the calm Rue Bressan. The sun had broken through the clouds, it was a fine day. A family had just come out of a villa called "The Wave." The daughter was buttoning her gloves, standing on the pavement. She could have been about thirty. The mother, planted on the first step, was looking straight ahead with an assured air, breathing heavily. I could only see the enormous back of the father. Bent over the keyhole, he was closing the door and locking it. The house would remain black and empty till they got back. In the neighbouring houses, already bolted and deserted, the floor and furniture creaked gently. Before going out they had put out the fire in the dining-room fireplace. The father rejoins the two women, and the family walks away without a word. Where were they going? On Sunday you go to the memorial cemetery or you visit your parents, or, if you're completely free, you go for a walk along the jetty. I was free: I followed the Rue Bressan which leads to the Jetty Promenade.

The sky was pale blue: a few wisps of smoke, and from time to time, a fleeting cloud passed in front of the sun. In the distance I could see the white cement balustrade which runs along the Jetty Promenade; the sea glittered through the interstices. The family turns right on the Rue de l'Aumonier-Hilaire which climbs up the Coteau Vert. I saw them mount slowly, making three black stains against the sparkling asphalt. I turned left and joined the crowd streaming towards the sea.

There was more of a mixture than in the morning. It seemed as though all these men no longer had strength to sustain this fine social hierarchy they were so proud of before luncheon. Businessmen and officials walked side by side; they let themselves be elbowed, even jostled out of the way by shabby employees. Aristocrats, elite, and professional groups had melted into the warm crowd. Only scattered men were left who were not representative.

A puddle of light in the distanceùthe sea at low tide. Only a few reefs broke the clear surface. Fishing smacks lay on the sand not far from sticky blocks of stone which had been thrown pell-mell at the foot of the jetty to protect it from the waves, and through the interstices the sea rumbled. At the entrance to the outer harbour, against the sun-bleached sky, a dredge de-

51fined its shadow. Every evening until midnight it howls and groans and makes the devil of a noise. But on Sunday the workers are strolling over the land, there is only a watchman on board: there is silence.

The sun was clear and diaphanous like white wine. Its light barely touched the moving figures, gave them no shadow, no relief: faces and hands made spots of pale gold. All these men in topcoats seemed to float idly a few inches above the ground. From time to time the wind cast shadows against us which trembled like water; faces were blotted out for an instant, chalky white.

It was Sunday; massed between the balustrade and the gates of residents' chalets, the crowd dispersed slowly, forming itself into a thousand rivulets behind the "Grand Hotel de la Com-pagnie Transatlantique." And children! Children in carriages, children in arms, held by the hand, or walking by twos and threes, in front of their parents, with a stiff and formal look. I had seen all these faces a little while before, almost triumphant in the youth of a Sunday morning. Now, dripping with sunlight, they expressed nothing more than calm, relaxation and a sort of obstinacy.

Little movement: there was still a little hat-raising here and there, but without the expansiveness, the nervous gaiety of the morning. The people all let themselves lean back a little, head high, looking into the distance, abandoned to the wind which swept them and swelled out their coats. From time to time, a short laugh, quickly stifled, the call of a mother, Jeannot, Jeannot, come here. And then silence. A faint aroma of pale tobacco: the commercial travellers are smoking it. Salammbo, Aicha; Sunday cigarettes. I thought I could detect sadness on some of the more relaxed faces: but no, these people were neither sad nor gay: they were at rest. Their wide-open, staring eyes passively reflected sea and sky. They would soon go back, drink a cup of family tea together round the dining-room table. For the moment they wanted to live with the least expenditure, economize words, gestures, thoughts, float: they had only one day in which to smooth out their wrinkles, their crow's feet, the bitter lines made by a hard week's work. One day only. They felt the minutes flowing between their fingers; would they have time to store up enough youth to start anew on Monday morning1? They filled their lungs because sea air vivifies: only their breathing, deep and regular as that of sleepers, still testified that they were alive. I walked

stealthily, I didn't know what to do with my hard, vigorous body in the midst of this tragic, relaxed crowd.

The sea was now the colour of slate; it was rising slowly. By night it would be high; tonight the Jetty Promenade would be more deserted than the Boulevard Victor-Noir. In front and on the left, a red fire would burn in the channel.

The sun went down slowly over the sea. In passing, it lit up the window a Norman chalet. A woman, dazzled by it, wearily brought her hand to her eyes, and shook her head.

"Gaston, it's blinding me," she says with a little laugh.

"Hey, that sun's all right," her husband says, "it doesn't keep you warm but it's a pleasure to watch it."

Turning to the sea, she spoke again:

"I thought we might have seen it."

"Not a chance," the man says, "it's in the sun."

They must have been talking about the He Caillebotte whose southern tip could sometimes be seen between the dredge and the quay of the outer-harbour.

The light grows softer. At this uncertain hour one felt evening drawing in. Sunday was already past. The villas and grey balustrade seemed only yesterday. One by one the faces lost their leisured look, several became almost tender.

A pregnant woman leaned against a fair, brutal-looking young man.

"There, there . . . there, look," she said.

"What?"

"There . . . there . . . the seagulls."

He shrugged: there were no seagulls. The sky had become almost pure, a little blush on the horizon.

"I heard them. Listen, they're crying. . . ."

He answered:

"Something's creaking, that's all."

A gas lamp glowed. I thought the lamplighter had already passed. The children watch for him because he gives the signal for them to go home. But it was only a last ray of the setting sun. The sky was still clear, but the earth was bathed in shadow. The crowd was dispersing, you could distinctly hear the death rattle of the sea. A young woman, leaning with both hands on the balustrade, raised her blue face towards the sky, barred in black by lip-stick. For a moment I wondered if I were not going to love humanity. But, after all, it was their Sunday, not mine.

The first light to go on was that of the lighthouse on the HeCaillebotte; a little boy stopped near me and murmured in ecstasy, "Oh, the lighthouse!"

Then I felt my heart swell with a great feeling of adventure.

I turn left and, through the Rue des Voiliers, rejoin the Little Prado. The iron shutters have been lowered on all the shop windows. The Rue Tournebride is light but deserted, it has lost its brief glory of the morning; nothing distinguishes it any longer from the neighbouring streets. A fairly strong wind has come up. I hear the archbishop's metal hat creaking.

I am alone, most of the people have gone back home, they are reading the evening paper, listening to the radio. Sunday has left them with a taste of ashes and their thoughts are already turning towards Monday. But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which pass in disorder, and then, sudden lightning like this one.

Nothing has changed and yet everything is different. I can't describe it; it's like the Nausea and yet it's just the opposite: at last an adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here; I am the one who splits the night, I am as happy as the hero of a novel.

Something is going to happen: something is waiting for me in the shadow of the Rue Basse-de-Vieille, it is over there, just at the corner of this calm street that my life is going to begin. I see myself advancing with a sense of fatality. There is a sort of white milestone at the corner of the street. From far away, it seemed black and, at each stride, it takes on a whiter colour. This dark body which grows lighter little by little makes an extraordinary impression on me: when it becomes entirely clear, entirely white, I shall stop just beside it and the adventure will begin. It is so close now, this white beacon which comes out of the shadows, that I am almost afraid: for a moment I think of turning back. But it is impossible to break the spell. I advance, I stretch out my hand and touch the stone.

Here is the Rue Basse-de-Vieille and the enormous mass of Sainte-Cecile crouching in the shadow, its windows glowing. The metal hat creaks. I do not know whether the whole world has suddenly shrunk or whether I am the one who unifies all sounds and shapes: I cannot even conceive of anything around me being other than what it is.

I stop for a moment, I wait, I feel my heart beating; my

eyes search the empty square. I see nothing. A fairly strong wind has risen. I am mistaken. The Rue Basse-de-Vieille was only a stage: the thing is waiting for me at the end of the Place Ducoton.

I am in no hurry to start walking again. It seems as if I had touched the goal of my happiness. In Marseilles, in Shanghai, Meknes, what wouldn't I have done to achieve such satisfaction? I expect nothing more today, I'm going home at the end of an empty Sunday: it is there.

I leave again. The wail of a siren comes to me on the wind. I am all alone, but I march like a regiment descending on a city. At this very moment there are ships on the sea resounding with music; lights are turned on in all the cities of Europe; Communists and Nazis shooting it out in the streets of Berlin, unemployed pounding the pavements of New York, women at their dressing-tables in a warm room putting mascara on their eyelashes. And I am here, in this deserted street and each shot from a window in Neukolln, each hiccough of the wounded being carried away, each precise gesture of women at their toilet answers to my every step, my every heartbeat.

I don't know what to do in front of the Passage Gillet. Isn't anyone waiting for me at the end of the passage? But there is also at the Place Ducoton at the end of the Rue Tournebride something which needs me in order to come to life. I am full of anguish: the slightest movement irks me. I can't imagine what they want with me. Yet I must choose: I surrender the Passage Gillet, I shall never know what had been reserved for me.

The Place Ducoton is empty. Am I mistaken? I don't think I could stand it. Will nothing really happen? I go towards the lights of the Cafe Mably. I am lost, I don't know whether I'm going in: I glance through the large, steamed windows.

The place is full. The air is blue with cigarette smoke and steam rising from damp clothing. The cashier is at her counter. I know her well: she's red haired, as I am; she has some sort of stomach trouble. She is rotting quietly under her skirts with a melancholy smile, like the odour of violets given off by a decomposing body. A shudder goes through me: she . . . she is the one who was waiting for me. She was there, standing erect above the counter, smiling. From the far end of the cafe something returns which helps to link the scattered moments of that Sunday and solder them together and which gives them a meaning. I have spent the whole day only to end there, with my nose gluedagainst the window, to gaze at this delicate face blossoming against the red curtain. All has stopped; my life has stopped: this wide window, this heavy air, blue as water, this fleshy white plant at the bottom of the water, and I myself, we form a complete and static whole: I am happy.