The Lepers Read online

  'For the past half-hour you've been maintaining to me that you couldn't marry because of your work. Have you changed your mind once more, then?'

  'That attitude was thoroughly sound. But other attitudes towards that same subject are thoroughly sound, too. Nothing is easier for me, therefore, than to switch from one to the other. Like the different rooms of a house: the furniture is different, the exposure is different, but it's the same house. To know how to use a house is to know how to live in one room or another according to one's mood, the time of day, or the season. Now, why have I changed? Because that (he pointed to the broken tooth) is not a jape. A girl pining away because a man keeps her in suspense, it's anything you like to call it, but it isn't nonsense. Solange is faced with a real problem, unlike those nincompoops who want to reconsider the universe but stand in mortal terror of their concierges (he tore the express letter into tiny pieces). The reason for her suffering is not a laughable one, as are the reasons for three quarters of the moral sufferings of humanity. And as for your being sad because your daughter is losing calcium, nothing could be more reasonable than your sadness. Whereas I, when I reply salus operis, though I know salus operis is a powerful and respectable position, I know, too, that there's a side to it which is also a jape. So I stop japing, and I marry. I'll telephone my lawyer first thing tomorrow morning, and tell him to get in touch with yours.'

  The telephone rang. Costals flung himself at the cut-off switch, which was in the hall. 'Hold your tongues, you idiots!' he bellowed.

  Mme Dandillot had followed him into the hall. Like a cat with a bird in its jaws, all she wanted was to enjoy her prey on her own, in the depths of the family den. Anything she said would be superfluous; the only thing to do was to go. The water was still gurgling indefatigably in the neighbouring WC (the flush being out of order), like a fountain in a Moroccan patio. Mme Dandillot took Costals' hand and gave it a squeeze: 'You're a real brick,' she said. Her agitation was such that she added: 'I hope you have a nice evening.' 'So do I,' said Costals, aware of what he had let himself in for. To cut short their mutual embarrassment, she departed hurriedly: 'I'll telephone you tomorrow.' The moment Mme Dandillot had told him he was a real brick, Costals realized he had let himself be duped.

  4

  to Pierre Costals

  Paris

  Andrée Hacquebaut

  Saint-Léonard (Loiret)

  10 January 1928

  I wanted to take up cycling again, not having done any for more than a year, and I went slap into a bench. My knee hurts, and I'm afraid I may have water on the knee. That's what comes of trying 'to come to terms with the outside world' when one isn't made for it.

  You have left me to stew in my ignorance, my uselessness, my cerebralness, my desiccation, whereas true intelligence should broaden life, not constrict it, fertilize not sterilize it. Under the umbrella of our love I would have branched out, spread circles around myself, like a stone thrown into the water. And yet you needn't feel guilty: my misfortune both pre-dates you and post-dates you. The fatal thing about me is, at one end of the scale, that encounter with the bench, and at the other end my inability to encounter other people. I have lived too much alone, lived too much in books, to know how to make contact with my fellow-creatures. I keep telling myself that I shall know tomorrow. I make resolutions: 'After my thirty-first birthday.... Yes, after the 23rd of April.... Between now and then there's no point in trying, because I've made up my mind that in three months' time I shall start being a new woman.' In my cowardly way, I give myself this extension, this respite. But I know quite well that on the 23rd April I shall feel the same impotence, the same inhibitions. And I'm young and healthy, my face - whatever you may think of it - is not repulsive. What will it be like when I am withered and infirm!

  People tell me I should get married. But I'm not marriageable unless my love can be boundless. I shall never be dominated physically except by a man who has first dominated me in every other way. The phoenix of these phoenixes having fled, I shall not seek another love. To build up from scratch, to work oneself up over nonentities, to feel one is always the senior partner, not to know why one loves except out of a need to love - the very thought of it fills me with nausea. People say to me: 'You don't know what to do with yourself. Go to Orleans, or even Paris, and get a job.' Having no training, I should have to work in an office, and life in town, having to pay all my own expenses, wouldn't leave me with any more money than I have here; and on top of that a less healthy life, less leisure, and a soul-destroying job. And meeting more human beings wouldn't in itself teach me how to break the ice, or, if by some miracle I did break it, how to manoeuvre in such a way that there would be a second time. 'Attempts at a break-through' was the phrase they used during the war; I can never manage to break through this hellish circle of loneliness. I wander on the perimeter not only of the world of men but of the world in general; I look around furtively, I eavesdrop. My awkwardness is such that if there's someone with whom I'm 'on good terms' but whom I don't often see, I avoid a meeting because there's a good chance that if we met I'd manoeuvre so successfully that I should alienate him for ever.

  Women? They find me antipathetic. Besides, they don't interest me. Men? I don't know how to attract them, so that settles that. If a man is middling, and by chance does not disgust me, I seem to him too intellectual; 'affected', one of them put it (me, 'affected'!...). Last year, during the summer holidays, I happened to say to the young brother of one of my girl-friends, a schoolboy: 'You do nothing from morning till night. Why don't you read, take notes, improve your mind.' This phrase 'improve your mind' was a great hit; it appears it's a typical blue-stocking's remark. As the only intelligent man I've ever met, you know better than I do. . . . Children? They don't attract me. I belong to the race of lovers, not to the race of mothers - two very different races in my opinion: a woman can be a mother several times over, and yet be only a lover, whereas another woman or girl who loves a man may in reality only love the children she hopes he will give her. So I am not of the race of mothers, but there have been times when I regretted not being a mother. What maddened me far more than being deprived of children was not having experienced all those things that go with it, among others that immense revelation about life - life seen from an entirely new angle - which maternity must be.

  But that was no more than my old regret at not having had. What is new is something I experienced in October. I had to spend a day in Orleans with my uncle, in order to sign some documents in connection with a great-aunt's estate. And there, in the square where I had sat down for a while, I found myself surrounded by toddlers who came up and gazed at me with an affection and trust that quite bowled me over (after all, I might have been a wicked fairy!), putting their grubby little paws in my lap. So, they had not sensed the curse with which I am afflicted, and I was so touched. But I had no idea what to say to them, or if I did say something they promptly went away: I couldn't hold them, any more than I can hold anyone else. One of the mothers, who was sitting beside me, was longing to start a conversation, but I slipped away. I should have been ashamed to admit I was a spinster, and if I had lied, if I had said, as for a moment I thought of saying: 'I too have a child', I should soon have given myself away by my ignorance of things maternal: I'd be no more capable of talking about nappies and feeding than you must be. (Indeed, what am I capable of talking about, apart from books and love? Just as I can't swim, or drive a car, or ride, or sing, or play the piano, or cook, or dress-make, or even ride a bicycle without attacking benches: I know nothing about anything. To understand Bergson is to believe oneself to be on a level with Bergson, but to make good jam is quite another matter.) So I got up quickly and went away in despair. And now, when I hear the kids calling 'Mum!' it's like a dagger in my heart. All these women who are not a patch on me, most of them stupid, yet to whom these children belong, whilst here I am perpetually hovering on the periphery of closed Edens, exiled from all that is human, carrying around with me wherever I go
an atmosphere of chilliness and suspicion and absurdity.... Woe betide homeless women, who are obliged to pursue other people's husbands, or other people's children, to fulfil their need for love! Or stray dogs and the neighbours' cats. Our neighbour's cat, when I smother it with kisses, looks at me in surprise, and seems to understand.

  One fine morning in the middle of all this my uncle and I each received a most unexpected cheque from the lawyer, a legacy from my great-aunt. Fifteen hundred francs for myself, out of the blue!

  This money arrived just at the moment when I was most preoccupied with my regrets at not having any children. And immediately I had an idea: to give it to the day-nursery run by the nuns of Sainte-Opportune here. Fifteen hundred francs is a tidy little sum for Saint-Léonard. I would become the 'benefactress'. I could go into the day-nursery as I liked; they could no longer refuse me anything. Incapable by myself of finding a place among normal human beings, I would buy my way in. I would be paying for the right to take an interest in these children as though they were my own. I would be paying for something to live for. It was a horrible idea, if you like, but since there's no other way....

  And then, after thinking it over, I saw what would happen. They would accept my money, and gradually I would be eased out. Why? Because I would be out of place in that little circle, awkward, useless, in fact an embarrassment. They would say to one another: 'What's she doing here, what does she want?' They wouldn't know what to think.... Oh, I saw it all so clearly! The embarrassment of the good nuns, torn between the respect due to the 'benefactress' and the aversion they would feel towards me, a justifiable aversion, since I am indeed not one of them, since I do not and cannot belong to any human community. So I gave up the idea. When I try to fasten on to other people, in order to draw my happiness from them, and they resist me, it's bad enough. But to be rejected when I try to make them happy, ah! that would be another dagger in my heart.

  Let's be honest. I know perfectly well that it wouldn't have been the happiness of those wretched kids I was after, but my own, always my own. They would simply have been the means I used to get away from myself. I'm well aware that self-sacrifice is not in my nature. At thirty years and nine months the best thing one could do would be to be a big sister, to help others. And apparently (it's something one hears people say) when one's unhappy it's a way of becoming less so. But to do that one would have to have one's life behind one, one would have to be a woman who has experienced life, who is throwing into this second-rate existence, into these petty responsibilities on behalf of second-rate people, the skin of a well-sucked fruit...

  This little episode has taught me one thing at least: to understand a certain category of people, and to pity them - those who have lots of money and throw it around without ever succeeding in finding happiness. That must be even worse than being penniless and unhappy. If one is penniless and unhappy one can always console oneself by blaming one's unhappiness on lack of money; one's self-esteem is not affected. When one is unhappy with money one has to admit to oneself: 'There's something in me that alienates people and life.'

  Of the fifteen hundred francs, eleven hundred are still intact. Four hundred have gone on a dress, some bindings and some books (I've bought the whole of Sainte-Beuve!). I wanted to exchange money for life, but there's nothing doing: I can only exchange it for non-life. One makes an effort to be something other than what one is, then one gives up; being oneself is least difficult in the long run. The dog returns to its vomit.

  A.H.

  This letter was filed away by the recipient, unopened.

  5

  After his 'yes' to Mme Dandillot, Costals returned to the drawing-room and fell into an armchair. His first thought as a fiancé was an optimistic one. The door into the hall was open, and the lavatory cistern continued its Moroccan gurgle. 'Lavatory cisterns - that'll be your pigeon, Solange, old girl.' The weight slip was still lying on the table. He re-read it, and was touched. 'Poor little thing! Now we shall see her swell up again, as though she were being pumped full of air.'

  The struggle between his intellect and his heart was constant. Every time (or almost) he was generous, he felt sad about it afterwards. The consciousness of duty done had spoiled a lot of fun for him. He had done something decent seven years ago, and for seven years he had regretted it. He had done something decent twelve years ago and for twelve years had regretted it. One night he had dreamt that war had been declared, that volunteers had been called for, and he had offered himself; and as he marched off with the columns, tears ran down his cheeks. But these tears were not prompted by the horror of going off to the front; they arose from dismay at having chosen to go when he could have lain low; it was really goodness that he was suffering from.

  Once the nuptial 'yes' had been pronounced, Costals therefore expected to undergo a fit of depression. Nothing of the kind. The die was cast. With the uncertainty, the disease had evaporated. There was a difficult situation; but now it was simply a question of facing up to it, manipulating it, making the best of it. That was a man's job. And his folly left him strangely calm. 'One way or another, this parenthesis will be closed in two years. I'm thirty-four (the age at which Jesus Christ died; tradition says thirty-three, but I imagine that, following the general practice, Jesus knocked a year off). At thirty-six I shall be free once more. And it wasn't till the age of fifty that Tiberius began to lead a really agreeable life.'

  He ate a hearty dinner, to build up his strength for the coming ordeal. He waited all evening for a telephone call from Solange. How her voice would thrill at the other end of the line! He smiled in anticipation, and the words he would say to her sprang to his lips: 'Well, my little one, your obstinacy has triumphed! The "fireside mule", so dear to shoe-shops, that's you … And now I shall have to start hiding my manuscripts from you, like Tolstoy … ' But no ring came. He was surprised, and somewhat disappointed. 'Perhaps she wasn't dining at home.'

  Next day, when, at half past nine, he telephoned his lawyer to make an appointment, Solange had still not rung. After lunch, the same silence. 'For eight months she has been intent on this "yes". I come out with it, and it gives her no pleasure. If I had twopence worth of knowledge of the human mind, I might have guessed it. But I haven't. We know what the "psychology" a novelist puts into his books amounts to: sheer bluff from A to Z. Whatever happens hereafter, this can never be wiped out: that when I gave her what she so frantically desired, it never entered her head to pick up the receiver and say a word to me.

  'She, so unromantic, finds herself sucked into a romantic adventure. And I, so wary, allow myself to be taken in. Waverers shilly-shally for months, and then, exasperated with themselves, make up their minds at random, and usually take the most dangerous course. Flight into danger is the reaction of the weak. Yet everything I know of myself convinces me that I am neither weak nor indecisive. But she has lured me on to a terrain which is not mine, and that is her great advantage. Put the bravest infantry officer into an aeroplane or submarine, and he will probably lose his head. Each of us has his element, from which he must not be drawn.'

  The stupidity and incompetence of certain famous generals or marshals of France (outside their own speciality) is a source of amazement to intellectuals who have had occasion to meet them; but this suffocating secret must be kept, otherwise it's good-bye to the Academician's uniform: such is the intellectual's martyrdom. Gallieni, according to Lyautey, seems not to have been of that stamp. Lyautey cites one characteristic of his from which all of us should profit. Once while they were on the march in Tongking on the eve of going into battle, Lyautey was talking shop: 'Do stop fussing about all that,' Gallieni said to him. 'The orders are given, the necessary steps have been taken. What good will it do to ratiocinate about it? You've just as much need as I have to keep your grey matter in good condition. Let's talk about John Stuart Mill and we'll see what happens tomorrow morning.' And he took out from his greatcoat pocket a John Stuart Mill and a d'Annunzio. There's a man for you, and I bet he organized his
troops well, seeing how well he managed his personal economy: master of events as he was master of himself. Costals was to see Solange that evening. Since the decision was made, let it at least offer him the benefits of decisions made: that of leaving one's head and one's time free. From two o'clock till seven, Costals worked on the revision of his novel as though nothing had happened. Remembering his way of loving women, he even found a title for it: The Contemptuous Lover.

  When Solange appeared in Costals' flat he was taken aback. Her clothes hung loose over her bust and hips. And her face! The neck too thin, the skin clinging to the jaw-bones, the features drawn. On top of all that (one realized why she had felt the need for it), heavily made up. It was the first time he had seen her made up. And what make-up! A 'foundation' of dark powder badly put on - in slabs, and her ears full of it - which in taking off her hat she had smudged over her forehead, so that her forehead was partly yellow and partly white - the papal colours! And her new hair style; so much 'the young woman' already! He kissed her with a sort of tender pity. They sat down side by side on the sofa, and he gently pinched the skin of her elbow. Embarrassed, he said jokingly: 'My poor pet, what has become of you! But we'll soon see you fill out: a real Jewish fiancee from Tunisia - they fatten them up like poultry over there....' She smiled wanly, and they fell silent. He did not know what to say to her. Yet it seemed to him that the words should have gushed from them both. But nothing came, and he felt stiff and shy in front of his wife, as he had not been since the beginning, in the box at the Opéra- Comique. 'Well, are you pleased?' he asked at last, awkwardly. She did not answer, but he felt her cold hand sliding into his, as a reptile slides into the snake-charmer's sack.