When I Was Old (14 page)

When, at my home, he asked me:

‘Could it be said that perhaps it all leads to God?'

I answered:

‘I wouldn't say yes or no.'

This he translated as:

‘I wouldn't say no.'

And what God? We didn't discuss that. He places his own,
ex officio
, as the goal of my preoccupations, as if a hundred others didn't exist.

The man who interests me, the man who forever fascinates me, is turned into just the conventional man I've always taken such pains to escape.

Do you understand what I mean, dear Sigaux? I don't doubt that he examined my work honestly. But he wasn't looking for me. Without wishing to, without knowing it, he was looking for himself.

I don't blame him. Once more, it's not my business. And perhaps after all, I'm the one who is wrong. I have been given an impression of myself and my work, and it is probably inevitable that I do not recognize myself.

But a few comments are still to the point. There are too many scientific terms for my taste. I too have studied the works he refers to and this can all be said much more simply.

This is a first impression. I haven't been lint-picking. I read it quickly. This kind of thing is always difficult for me, as I told you, which probably explains my severity. You would have written differently, wouldn't you? And you would have written something different?

All the same, the work will probably have its uses, its readers. All opinions are worth having. And, I repeat, I am the worst judge. Once Anatole France indignantly sent back the portrait that the painter van Dongen had made of him. I won't be so ridiculous. And when I'm
back on my feet I'll return to my novels. It isn't healthy for a novelist to analyse himself, still less so for him to discuss the opinions others have of him.

Nielsen, however, will decide. I am persuaded that he will publish the work, not at the
Presses
, no doubt, which would risk making the book look like a puff, but in one of his other houses. That's up to him. And, for myself, I continue to respect Dr R. without bitterness. Isn't it also one of my themes that no one knows his neighbour, or even those who are dearest to him?

All that for your ears, my dear Sigaux, because I am fond of you and because I know you understand me. I'll be at Versailles with D. until Monday morning. We are ‘incommunicado', the two of us, doing nothing at all, seeing no one at all, and if I don't see R., it's nothing personal. I need to rest, and if I once open my door … But I'll see you soon. I hope so.

My affectionate best wishes, and my wife's.

                                                  Yours

                                                  Georges Simenon

I won't reread, otherwise I probably wouldn't send you this letter, which I wanted to be spontaneous and totally frank.

Out of laziness, instead of copying two or three passages I've pasted in a photostat of my letter to Gilbert Sigaux on
the subject of Dr R.'s book about me. Does this mean that I attach much importance to these details? It would be a mistake to think so.

For more than thirty years – more than forty – people have written all that they wanted to about me in various publications, true and false, much more false than true. And they go on.

I have never made use of my right to answer. I haven't sent any corrections. Moreover, I have not, afterwards, discussed their opinions with journalists, critics, etc. I have said nothing of N., nothing of P. Others are now putting in their oar. All of them pretend to know me, decide
ex cathedra
on my most intimate feelings, on my instincts, on my opinions (which I have never expressed).

Is it really surprising that I feel the urge to correct all this? There is something to respect in every opinion. Perhaps there is truth in what these people write. But isn't there some chance that some of my ideas – about myself – are true too? I've only raised a few minor points in my letter to Sigaux. This may help to fix the truth somewhere, insofar as a truth exists in what concerns the individual. Enough on this subject, this time, and I hope for a long time to come.

Yesterday we went to the Vlamincks', at La Tourrilière, for the first time since Vlaminck's death. The house has not been made into a shrine. One isn't forcibly reminded of the absent one. The mother and daughters continue their quiet life. It is comforting, not sad, and I am grateful to Berthe for her attitude. There exist, then, also undemanding widows.

Went to — restaurant just now, alone, since when we're travelling D. doesn't eat lunch. Pale sun. The restaurant bright, gay, welcoming, with a pretty terrace facing the fence of the château of Versailles. Made you want to stop there, to eat there. At just 12:30, buses filed past, some of them stopped, from Belgium, Germany, England, even from Canada. Each one disgorged its cargo. The tables were ready, and the meals, arranged several months ago by agencies, planned meals.

I'm not one of those who groan about the times. Actually, I don't think they're much different from any other. As with countries, the differences are mostly on the surface. The Romans knew about spas, the villas, and the traffic jams at the city gates.

Day before yesterday, in an interview televised in France, Kennedy, candidate for the US presidency, finished by saying:

‘We sent you millions of tourists. In return, you must send us some French ones.'

Not so that they may get to know the country. Not in order to make contacts. Tourism has become a question of commercial balance.

Once, there was Baden-Baden. Other spas had their day. Then there were jokes about Switzerland, where a guide waited for foreigners at the foot of each glacier.

Yesterday, in the French papers, it was announced that the government was going to campaign for an increase
in the consumption of ice cream, in order to absorb the overproduction of milk.

The arduous drive to get people to drink apple juice has begun.

Man is made to travel for financial reasons. He is forced, or almost, to buy a house or an apartment even if he is a nomad. He is forced to consume this or that. Gas must be burned and automobiles must be sold.

It is even announced, always officially:

‘Next weekend there will be ninety deaths on the roads.'

And the forecast is accurate within two or three.

The Bible was concerned with the behaviour of each person, with his food, his hygiene. And in earlier times, there were great priests and sorcerers who performed the same role.

Does the public realize it? Today, people cannot be unaware that their individualism is being scientifically hunted, that if his means are increased, it is in order to make him consume more, and, in the last analysis, to consume only what he is intended to consume.

This happens no longer in the name of religion, barely in the name of hygiene. It's an economic question. And it is cynically admitted as such.

Man doesn't revolt. Nine times out of ten, he submits.

One sheep … two sheep … three sheep …

He jumps.

And, looking at the faces of the people whom the buses disgorge on Versailles, there is no reason to believe he isn't happy.

So?

Too bad about the tenth. He must jump too, and he can still grumble, which is not yet wholly forbidden.

Today is a beautiful day and on television I watch the end of the Olympic Games in Rome where tens of thousands of people – as centuries ago – are seated on the tiers.

This morning, at Versailles, a Sunday morning like those I recall in childhood memories. From a distance of fifty years in spite of all the discoveries, inventions, styles, etc., very little difference in the atmosphere of a small-town Sunday morning.

Back home. Versailles closed on an idiotic note. And we would have it that our passions and our acts depend on personality alone! – when we don't call it intelligence – when the least change in outward atmosphere influences us. The moon madness that the blacks in Gabon talk about may not be so stupid after all.

Changed the furniture in my study (English now, except for a table, which I'm looking for), books in place. Threw
out (or rather sent to a hospital) a good third of my old books. Leaving for Paris tomorrow. I read this passage from a piece in
Newsweek
of the 19th of September on Sydney Smith, Professor of Forensic Medicine at Edinburgh University – one of the founders of modern forensic medicine – at the end of his career:

‘After a lifetime spent in the study of murder and murderers, does Sir Sydney have a theory about the kind of person who kills? “In my recollection,” he writes, “they have been devoid of the characteristics they are commonly credited with, and [are]
quite ordinary individuals such as you and me.
” '

For thirty years I have tried to make it understood that there are no criminals.

Want to write a novel as soon as possible. If Professor A. will get rid of my dizziness for me.

Arrived at the house yesterday – once more – with the same joy, the same sense of well-being, and a new regime. The four children are under the same roof all at once for several days, the youngest not recognizing the oldest. D. perfect. Indeed, she made a gesture that touched me (her gift, to Marc, of her car, which she loves). But it's something else, I don't know what, which gives me pleasure, which makes her closer to me.

About that, I don't want to write. Nor about anything else, which means, I think, that a new novel isn't far off.
Providing my head cold and dizziness f … off. Have rarely felt so clearly as during this brief trip to Paris – a dress rehearsal, supper afterwards, visit to the doctor, dinner at the Elysée Club with friends – what a stranger I am to all that, only interested in our little family unit. And, when I have a desire to escape it, it is for an even more limited unit: to be anywhere at all, in a hotel apartment, or on the sidewalks, with D. The essential unit: the couple. After which one gathers one's chicks under one's wings.

An amusing (?) idea came to me just now. At last report, Professor A.
dixit
, and he seems to me right, that the cause of my recent troubles, minor dizziness, etc., could be an infection of the inner ear called Ménière's syndrome.

Now it so happens that among the recurring motifs which are found in my novels, and which some people have tried to explain by hook or crook, is a sudden sensation of unreality of the environment, of people, of the outside world, which one of my characters experiences.

If, some day, the critics learn that I was more or less subject to attacks of Ménière's disease, they would discover that this sometimes causes such sensations.

From there, to conclude that … It's utterly idiotic. And I'm aware that one could thus go on infinitely to make diagnoses of books and authors.

I had this sensation of unreality even as a child. I'm sure that every one of us has had it at one time or another in his life. I would swear that it is inherent in the human condition.

But the critics wouldn't believe that. Didn't I react as they do with regard to Balzac and to Cushing's disease? So much the worse for me. Not to mention the fact that it hasn't the slightest importance.

Regret I wrote the preceding. Seems to me both pretentious and forced. But I promised myself neither to cross out nor to tear out pages. On the subject of A., I'm struck by his assurance, and that of other top medical men.

Is he, are they, really sure of themselves? Isn't this a professional attitude which they find necessary to use with certain patients? Do they come to believe it themselves? I suspect so, and this fits in with what I've said about statesmen, politicians, etc. They speak, make gestures, go and come as if … But in reality? A very small detail struck me. At a certain moment, A. gave me his latest book, a big treatise which, I think, is considered important by people in his field. Apparently it was to have me read a quotation of Ménière.

‘You see that I too write my novels!' he then said to me in a voice in which I sensed some bitterness.

There was no doubt he would have traded his big treatise for a few novels. His colleague, Professor D., spends half his day at literary tasks, the other half only at his scientific works.

What does that prove? That they are not so easy in their skins as they would like to appear. They do not
believe in themselves, or at least they don't believe in themselves all the time.

The more I know people the more I mistrust self-assurance. I would like to ask the Pope a few questions, eyeball to eyeball.

Tomorrow Johnny's birthday. I see Tumacacori, Tucson, twelve years ago, D. and me eleven years ago. It's so much more important than anything else. But that has no place here, nor anywhere. Basically, I'm talking about everything except what I really have in my heart, because one cannot speak of certain things without falsifying them.

Happy birthday, my dear old Johnny! And Marc, and Marie-Jo, and little Pierre. And D., who wants so much to make us all happy.

One doesn't find any of that in my novels, either.

I know, like all men of my age, no doubt, how old a novelist is by the meaning he gives to the word ‘old', or to the age of someone he calls ‘old man'. In my first books, old men were often scarcely more than forty-nine or fifty years old.

But what young men cannot understand is that at fifty-seven, or sixty, or seventy (I don't yet know) one has just the same hopes that they have.

Today, for example. I had a twinge of the heart about Marc and his wife leaving in a car for Paris with a little
suitcase on the baggage rack of the MG. We too, D. and I, used to take off that way, without preparation, for anywhere at all, or sometimes quite at random.