Nausea (21 page)

"I've tried too often. I'm past the age when you can start your life again. I'm old, you know."

The young man laughs ironically. She goes on:

"I couldn't stand being deceived."

"You must have confidence in life," the young man says; "the way you are this moment isn't living."

She sighs: 1 know!

"Look at Jeannette."

"Yes," she says, making a little grimace.

"Well, I think what she did was splendid. She had courage."

"You know," the young woman says, "she rather jumped at

the opportunity. You must know that if I'd wanted, I could have had a hundred opportunities like that. I preferred to wait."

"You were right," he says, tenderly, "you were right in waiting for me."

She laughs in turn:

"Great stupid! I didn't say that."

I don't listen to them any more: they annoy me. They're going to sleep together. They know it. Each one knows that the other knows it. But since they are young, chaste and decent, since each one wants to keep his self-respect and that of the other, since love is a great poetic thing which you must not frighten away, several times a week they go to dances and restaurants, offering the spectacle of their ritual, mechanical dances. . . .

After all, you have to kill time. They are young and well built, they have enough to last them another thirty years. So they're in no hurry, they delay and they are not wrong. Once they have slept together they will have to find something else to veil the enormous absurdity of their existence. Still ... is it absolutely necessary to lie?

I glance around the room. What a comedy! All these people sitting there, looking serious, eating. No, they aren't eating: they are recuperating in order to successfully finish their tasks. Each one of them has his little personal difficulty which keeps him from noticing that he exists; there isn't one of them who doesn't believe himself indispensable to something or someone. Didn't the Self Taught Man tell me the other day: "No one better qualified than Noucapie to undertake this vast synthesis?" Each one of them does one small thing and no one is better qualified than he to do it. No one is better qualified than the commercial traveller over there to sell Swan Toothpaste. No one is better qualified than that interesting young man to put his hand under his girl friend's skirts. And I am among them and if they look at me they must think that no one is better qualified than I to do what I'm doing. But I know. I don't look like much, but I know I exist and that they exist. And if I knew how to convince people I'd go and sit down next to that handsome white-haired gentleman and explain to him just what existence means. I burst out laughing at the thought of the face he would make. The Self-Taught Man looks at me with surprise. I'd like to stop but I can't; I laugh until I cry.

"You are gay, Monsieur," the Self-Taught Man says to me circumspectly."I was just thinking," I tell him, laughing, "that here we sit, all of us, eating and drinking to preserve our precious existence and really there is nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing."

The Self-Taught Man becomes serious, he makes an effort to understand me. I laughed too loud: I saw several faces turn towards me. Then I regretted having said so much. After all, that's nobody's business.

He repeats slowly:

"No reason for existing . . . you undoubtedly mean, Monsieur, that life is without a goal? Isn't that what one might call pessimism?"

He thinks for an instant, then says gently:

"A few years ago I read a book by an American author. It was called Is Life Worth Living? Isn't that the question you are asking yourself?"

Certainly not, that is not the question I am asking myself. But I have no desire to explain.

"His conclusion," the Self-Taught Man says, consolingly, "is in favour of voluntary optimism. Life has a meaning if we choose to pive it one. One must first act, throw one's self into some enterprise. Then, if one reflects, the die is already cast, one is pledged. I don't know what you think about that, Monsieur?"

"Nothing," I say.

Rather I think that that is precisely the sort of lie that the commercial traveller, the two young people and the man with white hair tell themselves.

The Self-Taught Man smiles with a little malice and much solemnity.

"Neither is it my opinion. I do not think we need look so far to know the direction our life should take."

"Ah?"

"There is a goal, Monsieur, there is a goal . . . there is humanity."

That's right: I forgot he was a humanist. He remains silent for a moment, long enough to make most of his spiced beef and a whole slice of bread disappear cleanly and inexorably. "There are people . . ." He has just painted a whole picture of himself, this philanthropist. Yes, but he doesn't know how to express himself. His soul is in his eyes, unquestionably, but soul is not enough. Before, when I used to hang around some Parisian humanists, I would hear them say a hundred times: "there are

people," and it was quite another thing. Virgan was without equal. He would take off his spectacles, as if to show himself naked in his man's flesh, and stare at me with eloquent eyes, with a weary, insistent look which seemed to undress me, and drag out my human essence, then he would murmur melodiously: "There are people, old man, there are people," giving the "there are" a sort of awkward power, as if his love of people, perpetually new and astonished, was caught up in its giant wings.

The Self-Taught Man's mimicry had not acquired this smoothness; his love for people is naive and barbaric: a provincial humanist.

"People," I told him, "people ... in any case, you don't seem to worry about them very much: you're always alone, always with your nose in a book."

The Self-Taught Man clapped his hands and began to laugh maliciously:

"You're wrong. Ah, Monsieur, allow me to tell you so: what an error!"

He pulls himself together for an instant, and finishes a discreet gulp. His face is radiant as dawn. Behind him, the young woman breaks out in a light laugh. Her friend bends over her, whispering in her ear.

"Your error is only too natural," the Self-Taught Man says, "I should have told you a long time ago. . . . But I am so timid, Monsieur: I was waiting for the opportunity."

"Here it is," I told him politely.

"I think so too. I think so too! Monsieur, what I am about to tell you . . ." He stops, blushing: "But perhaps I am imposing on you?"

I assure him that he isn't. He breathes a sigh of happiness.

"One does not find men like you every day, Monsieur, men whose breadth of vision is joined to so much penetration. I have been wanting to speak to you for months, explain to you what I have been, what I have become. . . ."

His plate is as empty and clean as if it had just been brought to him. I suddenly discover, next to my plate, a small tin dish where a drum-stick swims in a brown gravy. It has to be eaten.

"A little while ago I spoke of my captivity in Germany. It all started there. Before the War I was lonely and didn't realize it; I lived with my parents, good people, but I didn't get on with them. When I think of those years . . . how could I have livedthat way? I was dead, Monsieur, and I didn't know it; I had a collection of postage stamps."

He looks at me and interrupts himself:

"Monsieur, you are pale, you look fatigued. I hope I'm not disturbing you?"

"You interest me greatly."

"Then the War came and I enlisted without knowing why. I spent two years without understanding, because life at the front left little time for thoughts and besides, the soldiers were too common. I was taken prisoner at the end of 1917. Since then I have been told that many soldiers recovered their childhood faith while they were prisoners. Monsieur," the Self-Taught Man says, lowering his eyelids over bloodshot eyes, "I do not believe in God; His existence is belied by science. But, in the internment camp, I learned to believe in men."

"They bore their fate with courage?"

"Yes," he says vaguely, "there was that, too. Besides, we were well treated. But I wanted to speak of something else; the last months of the War, they hardly gave us any work to do. When it rained they made us go into a big wooden shed, about two hundred of us altogether, jammed in tightly. They closed the door and left us there, pressed one against the other, in almost total darkness."

He hesitated an instant.

"I don't know how to explain it, Monsieur. All those men were there, you could hardly see them but you could feel them against you, you could hear the sound of their breathing. . . . One of the first times they locked us in the shed, the crush was so great that at first I thought I was going suffocate, then, suddenly, an overwhelming joy came over me, I almost fainted: then I felt that I loved these men like brothers, I wanted to embrace all of them. Each time I went back there I felt the same joy."

I have to eat my chicken which by now must be cold. The Self-Taught Man has been silent for a long time and the waitress is waiting to change the plates.

"That shed took on a sacred character in my eyes. Sometimes I managed to escape the watchfulness of my guards, I slipped into it all alone and there, in the shadow, the memory of the joys I had known, filled me with a sort of ecstasy. Hours passed and I did not notice them. Sometimes I wept."

I must be sick: there is no other way of explaining this terrible rage which suddenly overwhelms me. Yes, the rage of a sick

man: my hands were shaking, the blood had rushed to my face, and finally my lips began to tremble. All this simply because the chicken was cold. I was cold too and that was the worst: I mean that inside me I was cold, freezing, and had been like that for thirty-six hours. Anger passed through me like a whirlwind, my conscience, effort to react, to fight against this lowered temperature caused something like a tremor to pass through me. Vain effort: undoubtedly, for nothing. I would have rained down blows and curses on the Self-Taught Man or the waitress. But I should not have been in the spirit of it. My rage and fury struggled to the surface and, for a moment, I had the terrible impression of being turned into a block of ice enveloped in fire, a kind of "omelette surprise." This momentary agitation vanished and I heard the Self-Taught Man say:

"Every Sunday I used to go to Mass. Monsieur, I have never been a believer. But couldn't one say that the real mystery of the Mass is the communion of souls? A French chaplain, who had only one arm, celebrated the Mass. We had a harmonium. We listened, standing, our heads bare, and as the sounds of the harmonium carried me away, I felt myself at one with all the men surrounding me. Ah, Monsieur, how I loved those Masses. Even now, in memory of them, I sometimes go to church on Sunday morning. We have a remarkable organist at Sainte-Cecile."

"You must have often missed that life?"

"Yes, Monsieur, in 1919, the year of my liberation, I spent many miserable months. I didn't know what to do with myself, I was wasting away. Whenever I saw men together I would insert myself into their group. It has happened to me," he added, smiling, "to follow the funeral procession of a stranger. One day, in despair, I threw my stamp collection in the fire. . . . But I found my vocation."

"Really?"

"Someone advised me . . . Monsieur, I know that I can count on your discretion. I amùperhaps these are not your ideas, but you are so broad-mindedùI am a Socialist."

He lowered his eyes and his long lashes trembled:

"I have been a registered member of the Socialist Party, S.F.I.O., since the month of September 1921. That is what I wanted to tell you."

He is radiant with pride. He gazes at me, his head thrown back, his eyes half-closed, mouth open, looking like a martyr.

"That's very fine," I say, "that's very fine.""Monsieur, I knew that you would commend me. And how could you blame someone who comes and tells you: I have spent my life in such and such a way, I am perfectly happy?"

He spreads his arms and presents his open palms to me, the fingers pointing to the ground, as if he were about to receive the stigmata. His eyes are glassy, I see a dark pink mass rolling in his mouth.

"Ah," I say, "as long as you're happy. . . ."

"Happy?" His look is disconcerting, he has raised his eyelids and stares harshly at me. "You will be able to judge, Monsieur. Before taking this decision I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life."

He straightens himself, his cheeks swell.

"I am no longer lonely, Monsieur. I shall never be so."

"Ah, you know a lot of people?" I ask.

He smiles and I immediately realize my mistake.

"I mean that I no longer feel alone. But naturally, Monsieur, it is not necessary for me to be with anyone."

"But," I say, "what about the Socialist section. . . ."

"Ah! I know everybody there. But most of them only by name. Monsieur," he says mischievously, "is one obliged to choose his friends so narrowly? All men are my friends. When I go to the office in the morning, in front of me, behind me, there are other men going to work. I see them, if I dared I would smile at them, I think that I am a Socialist, that all of them are my life's goal, the goal of my efforts and that they don't know it yet. It's a holiday for me, Monsieur."