The Hippogriff Read online

  THE HIPPOGRIFF

  Nescio; sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

  I do not know ... but I feel it happening to me and am racked by it.

  Catullus, 85

  PART ONE

  Scoronconcolo, bring me my cloak of light. I want to stroll in a garden, where the shade will open wide my eyes. But above all, no work - at any price!

  On the way to Bagatelle we shall stop by the lakes to see the animals there. Animals we love, because they never lie. That was why man reduced them to slavery: they reminded him of truth.

  Happy is the life that begins with ambition and ends with no other aspiration than to throw bread to ducks! Here they come, trailing long triangles in their wake, each with its individual geometry that intersects the geometries traced by the others, while the water swells gently beneath the pressure of their plump breasts. Some have little green lanterns in place of heads. How beautiful they are when they feel an impluse to be gay, when they rise up, and balancing themselves on their tails, flap their wings enthusiastically: they remind one of Members of Parliament putting on a show of indignation. Suddenly they dive, leaving only a quizzical rump in the air. This position is slightly indecent when swans adopt it. But with ducks it scarcely matters, because ducks are so much smaller.

  Which reminds me, by the way, of the scoter-ducks on the Lake of Tunis. They perform a little pirouette as they float on the light swell. One feels what fun it is for them to let themselves go, just as one guesses the idea at the back of their heads, which is to imitate those celluloid ducks that are the pride of every well-bred bathroom.

  But I haven't yet finished with the ducks. How charming they are when they fly! How can a man (unless he is starving) bring himself to aim a gun at them? The sight of their happy freedom would cure us of the pangs of love, if we suffered from them, but luckily we don't. How swiftly they fly, striving to catch up with the leader ducks, who have chosen and imposed a direction on the flight: I fancy they must be bringing good news to someone. Then, having caught up, they all fly in line abreast. Clearly they are proud of their impeccable alignment. They have too much sense to want to overtake one another. They leave that to men....

  Bagatelle. These long hours in a garden are perhaps the best thing in our lives; there at least is something that takes the weight off your eyelids. And let me hear no more about adorable creatures; dream-land for me at present is to be rid of them. Today I abandon myself to the flowers and the foliage - they have the decency not to love me - and the milk of the day is warm in my mouth. It is that precious moment when the soul, having had its fill, dreams of the time when it will thirst again.

  Such is evidently not the frame of mind of my dear confrère, Pierre Costals - the devil take him! I see him walking there, flanked by an extremely pretty girl in deep mourning. This young person has apparently just lost her father or her mother, a godsend for a gigolo: under such circumstances, what woman would not need some relaxation? Costals is holding forth, as though he were giving a lecture. And she walks on (what a ravishing gait! - long-legged, and so natural ...), with her eyes glued to the toes of her shoes. Here I am, three yards behind them; it would be nice to overhear a remark that I could use against him some day. But they stop under an archway of rocks. Embrace. I hear: 'Cloc ... cloc ... cloc....' I remember that line from a youthful poem of Costals':

  The lovers' kisses like the sound of dropping turds.

  The resemblance had never struck me before. Why, yes, dear confrère: that's exactly it.

  Let us leave them. The weapons to be used against him are in his books. I admit he has some talent. But he irritates me, and there's nothing I can do about it. In the last resort, what do I feel about him? I am waiting for him to die.

  Two o'clock. The garden is filling up again. A healthy organism suddenly invaded by microbes. I want to go down this way; a man is there already. Retrace my steps? People there, too. I'm surrounded. Even where no one is to be seen, someone is whistling at the top of his lungs behind a bush, and with this noise, invisible though he is, he sets up against me his own conception of the universe, which is vulgarity itself. People pour into the garden from every side. I am not of their kind. If they realize this, what will they do to me? I think of those small divinities of the woods and springs who remained on earth for a time after the advent of Christianity, always on the alert. No myth has ever touched me more.

  Before leaving, as a souvenir of the garden I pick up a stone, cool as the necks of the young. But I do not know why I have picked it up, since I shall throw it away in a few minutes. Perhaps simply in order to be able to throw it away.

  On the way out, I pass a pretty girl sitting by the succulent grass on the edge of a walk. She is smoking, and studying a list of share prices. My face, which had relaxed, stiffens again. Lines reappear which the glow reflected from the foliage had effaced. I must go back to the world of men, I must begin to hate once more. Scoronconcolo, take back my cloak of light.

  After lunching with Solange in a restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne, Costals had taken her to the Bagatelle gardens.

  At their second meeting, in May, he had told her how surprised he was that such a pretty girl should still be unmarried. Answer: she had had several offers, but would only marry a man who attracted her. Costals knew how rash it was to be the first to talk of marriage, and it was out of a natural tendency to rashness that he had done so. Seneca has a famous phrase for woman: animal impudens. Add one letter and you have man: animal imprudens. After that, the subject of marriage had been dropped.

  Today, again, it was he who broached the subject point- blank:

  'Marriage without divorce. Christian marriage, is a monstrosity for men. Completely against nature. Man's instinct is to grow tired of what he is accustomed to, and yet he's expected to remain faithful to a woman who loses some of her attractiveness every week. A husband of fifty-five who isn't a moron is still in the prime of life: how can he be satisfied with a woman of fifty unless he's a pervert? If he does it out of a sense of duty, nature rebels, and his health suffers. All the most intelligent doctors I know advise men of that age, if they are at all virile, to be unfaithful. Christian marriage is the basis for a whole multitude of offences against reason and nature - but then that is the very essence of Christianity: quia absurdum. You'd think the "jealous" god wanted man to be miserable, and created him stupid so that in his stupidity he would deliberately seek out the conditions that make for misery. As far as I'm concerned, I'll tell you this: the upper age-limit for a woman if she is to be considered desirable by yours truly is roughly twenty-six. As for the lower limit, better not mention it. An Arab naturalist of old, who has deservedly become a classic case as a result of similar characteristics, tells us that the hare changes sex every six months. For me, a woman changes sex at twenty- six or twenty-seven, and ceases to be a woman to become something one no longer desires. Do you think I would want to kiss you, let alone all the rest, when you're fifty? Not to mention the moral transformation: a woman, after marriage, can change morally as well as physically, can become a different person, as a boy of sixteen may become a different person from the one he was at fourteen. One would be venturing into the unknown.'

  Suddenly, like a bird flitting from a branch, a little girl jumped down from a bench.

  Continuously though she turned the idea of marriage over in her head, Solange could not have been less prepared to counter these observations with judicious arguments. She listened, with an air of some constraint, without saying a word. He went on:

  'An average man can marry. But if a man who's at all exceptional marries, woe betide him. Great men's marriages are the part of their lives they hate to admit. A wife is a source of worry, and an exceptional man must have serenity of mind
. A writer, for instance, must be able to regulate, measure out what he gets from life, turn on or off at will the tap marked life and the tap marked work. One writer [Emile Clermont.] has said something to this effect: "What I need are flat, level days, empty days, so empty that even love and friendship would disturb them." Such empty days are essential for reflection, conception and creation. And of course, there would be no question, as Flaubert exaggeratedly demanded, of empty days all the time. But empty days in one's own good time. For that, a man must not be dependent on anybody else, must not cohabit with anybody, and must have no business commitments. A creative man should be able to forget his wife and children. That is impossible, and besides, what is the point of marrying in order to forget you're married? I've tried living with women three times. With all three of them I quarrelled almost as soon as our cohabitation began. It's as automatic as falling out with a friend you've lent money to. Besides, I cannot bear to feel chained. To go and live abroad, or join a remote expedition, or withdraw into a religious retreat - all these things I can very well do without, but I need to feel that there is nothing to prevent me from doing them. Anything that tied me down would kill me; there's only one thing I'm tied to, and that is my work. I would put up with a thousand times more from an unacknowledged bastard of mine than from a legitimate child, from a mistress than from a wife, because it's the legal, compulsory nature of the tie that drives me mad.'

  'I can see that a man like you might do without marriage if need be. But the absence of children seems to me more serious, especially for someone like you who has no brothers and sisters.'

  'If I wanted to put it a bit pompously I would say this: I am wedded to life, and the books I draw from life are my children. It was in a similar spirit that Barrés said of Napoleon: "His victories were his daughters." And would to God Napoleon had had no other family but that! Another thing: one of the reasons why I wouldn't have a son today (let's not even speak of daughters - that would kill me) is because I believe that, in the world we live in, I couldn't have the kind of son I wanted. Sooner or later the ignominy of the age would be bound to rub off on him. And what would I do with a son I could not but despise? I would hate him, with an unbelievable hatred. I don't want to run that risk.'

  It was true that at the age of twenty, when he had had Philippe, he had not yet written anything, nor had he enough experience, nor perhaps enough self-discipline, to be deterred by the risks he was running. Chance had ordained that Philippe should turn out well. But it would be foolish to tempt providence.

  'And yet,' said Solange, 'there are plenty of men who are quite satisfied with marriage, even famous men.' (She confused famous men and exceptional men.)

  'The weak-willed and the simple-minded will always be satisfied with marriage. And remember this: those who defend marriage most vociferously are often those who suffer most from it. They feign marital bliss, for fear of being seen through and pitied.'

  'You're young now, but don't you think that a time will come when you will feel the need for someone to comfort you in moments of depression?'

  'What a very bourgeois idea of the world - to think that it's inevitable for men to have their moments of "depression"! Believe me, there are men who not only don't know what "depression" means, but haven't even the faintest notion of what it might be. Myself, for example, I never have the slightest need of support (unless of course I'm physically ill). I rely on my creativity; that is my health and my salvation; that is what relieves and refreshes me. I have no need to be two; or, more precisely, there is only one circumstance, one alone, in which I need another person besides myself, and that is for the purpose of pleasure. Otherwise, whenever I am, or visualize myself to be, with another person, I feel diminished. And in any case, supposing I did have difficult moments, I would find consolation either in myself or in the teachings of the sages. Or in the sexual act, the most potent consolation of all - but there's no need of a wife for that, as far as I know. I ask you, where could a young woman find the power to console me, otherwise than in her body? No, I'm afraid I have nothing but contempt for marriage conceived of as a mutual insurance policy between two poor devils who are incapable of standing up to "the difficulties of life" on their own: two shivering paupers who need each other's warmth.... If it is that, so much the better: we oughtn't to sneer at anything that comforts people. But let me repeat what I said to you at the beginning: that it's only for second-raters. And let's leave the rest out of it.'

  'Millions and millions of men, ever since the world began, have found solace in a wife. You can't alter that.'

  'Oh, yes I can - I can deny it by my actions. To every man his own destiny; and that's not mine. I have always had a brotherly feeling for Sisera, whose story is related in the Book of Judges. He's a Canaanite general, and fleeing from the Hebrews he takes refuge with Jael, the wife of an allied king. Jael comes out of her tent and says to him: "Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not." He goes into her tent, and lies down, exhausted, and she covers him with a cloak. And he asks for a little water, for he is dying of thirst. The Bible actually says "a little water", and when I think of the modesty of this request, I weep a tiny bit (if you don't see me weep, it's because I'm weeping inside). Sisera falls asleep, and Jael, taking a tent-peg and a mallet, nails his head to the ground from temple to temple. Sisera is a brother to me because of being hated and because of having such a thirst, which for me is the thirst of the triple tongue, my thirst, that is to say the thirst of the three wisdoms, and his fate would be mine if I ever took refuge with a woman: she would reduce my brain to pulp, because women always hate men's brains, and there's a remark of Mme Tolstoy's about her husband, so revealing of the female attitude and so profound in both its terms that it is worthy of holy writ: "I cannot abide him, because he never suffers, and because he writes." The Catholic theologians, or at any rate the Jansenist ones, in whose writings I came across it, claim that Sisera is one of the forms of the Devil. Which may well be, if one considers his thirst; though on the other hand I doubt whether the Devil would ever have put his trust in a woman, since he is the personification of Intelligence.'

  'You couldn't help admitting that when you are physically ill, you need help. When you are old and infirm, you'll be very glad to have a wife to prepare your poultices for you.'

  'I hope you said that like a parrot, and not after mature consideration. Because if you really meant it you would go right down in my estimation. What a splendid victory for a woman, to be called upon at last by a decrepit old man! On a par with the victory of the Church when the unbeliever in a coma agrees to see a priest. Well, yes, when I am old and tottering I may perhaps marry. And what then? It won't be a question of being united body and soul, and so on and so forth, but of giving a devoted nurse the satisfaction of an established position. And it won't invalidate anything I've said about marriage.'

  Now they were among the rose-beds, themselves a bit decrepit in the late July heat. He went on:

  'Whenever there is anything beautiful or successful, man somehow contrives to spoil it, even when it's his own creation. Just now I heard the murmur of distant water; we hurried towards it, and what did we see: a statue above the water - and a statue that isn't beautiful is something really horrible. If I see a bench, it has no back to it; and to make a bench without a back is to show very little knowledge of what real rest means. And now look at these roses, and then I'll tell you in what way they remind me of marriage. Each rose has an identity disc with its registration number, its French name, its Latin name, and a reference to a "plate", for we are still at school. I notice that none of these roses bears the name of a poet. But there's the "President Carnot" rose, as heavy as a soul in sorrow: it reminds me of those Algerian villages which used to be called in Arabic "Head of the Waters" or "Pigeon's Rest" and which were re-baptized "Ernest Renan" or "Sarrien". In this oasis which one thought had been created for relaxation and enjoyment, these labels plunge us right back into the social maelstrom. The "Honourable X" rose invites
us to consider such delicate moral problems as the precise definition of honourability. The "Entente Cordiale" rose obliges us, in spite of ourselves, to indulge in such questionable gestures as investigating whether it (the rose) may not have withered a bit. The "Mme X" (a well-known actress) forces us to draw a comparison between Mme X and a rose. In my opinion, having started on this path, one ought to go the whole hog, and I suggest that the names of the people appearing on these labels should henceforth be accompanied by their honorific titles, their French and foreign decorations, etc., not forgetting, wherever it applies, the sign indicating ownership of a car which one sees in directories, nor the entry HP for hôtel particulier.' [Hôtel particulier: a large private town house (Translator's note).]

  'But what's the connection between these roses and marriage?'

  'Man ruins love by marriage, as he has ruined these roses by red-tapery. Love is spoiled not only by marriage itself, but by the mere possibility of marriage. The spectre of marriage clanking its chains - the chains of marriage, needless to say - poisons any relationship with a girl. The moment I say to myself that I might... no, I can't even bear to pronounce the words ... my love for you begins to dwindle, as though under the influence of some evil spell. If I dismiss this baleful idea, it rears its head again and spurts fire. No, the only way of turning something as insensate as marriage into something at all reasonable would be to allow either party to divorce at will without any need for justification. A priest has the right to abandon the cloth after his novitiate if he feels he has no vocation for the mystic marriage. Ordinary marriage is a vocation too, and one needs to have had a taste of it to see whether one has it or not. I should certainly have married if I had been sure of being able to break it off without having to justify my decision, after a two-year trial, for example.'

  'A two-four-six year lease. Or rather six-four-two!'