When I Was Old (44 page)

When I was a child, what was called ‘la Belle Époque' was the Second Empire. When I was twenty, it was the period of 1900 to 1914. ‘Before the war' they said, too.

Now, ‘la Belle Époque' is the one I lived as a young man, 1925–1930.

It has even begun to extend to 1939. And young people who say ‘before the war' mean the Second World War.

And people talk about the cruelty, the inhumanity, the implacability of ‘the machine' as once they talked about the first trains, the first cars, the first aeroplanes, which we feel so sentimental about today.

As the ‘terrible' skyscrapers in New York will make us sentimental in a few years, will appear as gently, humanly picturesque to us as the iron footbridge and the six- or eight-storey houses on the Canal Saint-Martin.

This for my children, who will one day smile at our aerolites and the little metal spheres we send into space – which to them will be the suburbs of the earth.

Odd that officials, chiefs of state, continue to live and to receive one another in the palaces of another era, the Kremlin, Versailles, the Élysée, the White House, Buckingham Palace … as if they wanted to escape into the picturesque, however provisional, preferring the very old which, by virtue of its antiquity, has become ‘noble'.

There are always people around us who live in ‘la Belle Époque'.

A week of television. Saw part of a Buñuel film, among others. Marvellous images. Thought of Gerelhrode (?), who just died. There are two kinds of artists. Total rebels, the irrational ones, who are against everything without distinction, and others who arrive at a certain acceptance without being duped. Curious that
all
those in the first category whom I've met are psychiatric cases. So? Where does that put acceptance?

A whole month, my darling. Thirty-one days we have been apart. And I, from the first heart-rending day, I've had the temptation to take this notebook up again and write in it every morning and night.

If I haven't done so, it's because it would have been too sad, and these sadnesses must leave no traces behind them, no scars. No, later I only want to remember your courage, and also the rediscovery I have made of you, which may fill this emptiness I struggle against.

Not a true void, since I feel myself nearer to you than ever. It is rather a physical emptiness I strive to fill by occupying myself with the children and, on a more modest scale, with the house, waiting for the time to hurry to Prangins. Now I can tell you – for when you read this
short note you will be well again – it has often been difficult for me to keep up a show

(First interrupted by your telephone call, then by a journalist. I'm beginning again at eleven fifteen.)

… of good humour. I haven't even the right to talk to you about your return, for I feel that you exert all your strength not to precipitate it, and I don't want to make your task even more difficult.

Actually this note is useless. I am sure you are going through the same trials that I am, that you too, at certain hours, have to make an effort not to weep and that you can't always keep your voice steady, even on the telephone – and you have to force yourself to smile when we leave each other at five o'clock.

This separation wasn't necessary to prove to us that we need to be together. For a month I have lived in a world that seems artificial to me. I know that it's the end.

Another few days, a week or ten days, perhaps, if not less. I won't ask you again if the doctor has been to see you, because you would come to share my impatience and would lose the benefit of the enforced rest.

You have been good, my D. Courageous.

And never for a moment have you lost your sweetness. I've seen adorable, touching sides of your nature that I don't believe I've appreciated before.

It's not a new life we're about to begin, of course, since all that has gone before has been good too, seventeen years, almost eighteen of happiness.

But we'll fit together better than ever, more warmly,
in every curve and corner? Come quickly! I am greedy for you, in every sense. You caught me off guard this morning on the telephone, and I told you the truth about what I was doing, but I won't show you these lines until you return.

It has been hard, very hard, the hardest test of my life. But I know it was worth it, that it is worth it, and that our life together will be fuller than ever.

Soon, then, my D. Soon, dear girl whom I love and whom I keep lovingly and passionately within me.

End of the Third Notebook