The Age of Reason (33 page)

Mathieu handed her the bag; she took a powder-box out of it, and eyed her face with disgust.

‘It’s true — I do look as if I were dead,’ she said.

She put the bag down on the bed with a sign of exhaustion and added: ‘I’m not much more use than if I were dead.’

‘Do you feel ill?’

‘Rather ill. But I know what it is, it will pass off during the day.’

‘Do you want anything? Would you like me to fetch the doctor?’

‘No. Don’t worry. So it was Boris who sent you?’

‘Yes. He was in a dreadful state.’

‘Is he downstairs?’ asked Lola, hoisting herself up in bed.

‘No... I... I was at the Dôme, you understand, he came to look for me there. I jumped into a taxi, and here I am.’

Lola’s head fell back on to the pillow.

‘Thanks all the same.’

She began to laugh: a gasping, laboured laugh.

‘I see, he got the wind up, bless his heart. He bolted, and sent you to make sure I was really dead.’

‘Lola!’ said Mathieu.

‘That’s all right. No need to tell a tale.’

She shut her eyes again, and Mathieu thought she was going to faint. But in a moment or two she continued in a rasping tone: ‘Please tell him not to worry. I’m not in danger. I get these attacks sometimes when I... anyway, he’ll know why. It’s my heart that goes a bit wrong. Tell him to come along here at once — I’ll be waiting for him. I shall stay here till this evening.’

‘Very well,’ said Mathieu. ‘There’s really nothing you need?’

‘No: I shall be all right by this evening, I have to sing at that place.’ And she added: ‘He hasn’t done with me yet.’

‘Then good-bye.’

He made his way to the door, but Lola called him back. She said in an imploring voice: ‘You promise to make him come? We... we had a bit of an argument last evening, tell him I’m not angry with him any more, that everything is all right. But he must come: please, he must come! I can’t bear the idea that he should think me dead.’

Mathieu was touched. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll send him along.’

He went out. The packet of letters, which he had slipped into his breast pocket, weighed heavily against his chest. ‘He’ll be pretty sick,’ thought Mathieu. ‘I shall have to give him the key, he’ll find some means of getting it back into the bag.’ He tried to say to himself cheerfully: ‘It was clever of me not to take the money!’ But he wasn’t cheerful, it was a matter of no moment that his cowardice should have had fortunate results, the real point was that he
hadn’t been able
to take the money. ‘All the same,’ he thought, ‘I’m glad she’s not dead.’

‘Hullo, sir!’ shouted the chauffeur. ‘This way!’

Mathieu turned round in bewilderment.

‘Eh? Oh, it’s you,’ said he, recognizing the taxi. ‘All right, drive me to the Dôme.’

He sat down, and the taxi started. He wanted to dispel the thought of his humiliating defeat. He took out the packet of letters, untied the knot, and began to read. They were curt little missives which Boris had written from Laon during the Easter vacation. There was an occasional reference to cocaine, but in such veiled terms that Mathieu said to himself with surprise: ‘I didn’t know he could be so careful.’ The letters all began — ‘My dear Lola,’ and continued as brief narratives of the day’s doings. ‘I bathe. I’ve had a row with my father. I’ve made the acquaintance of a retired wrestler who is going to teach me the all-in style. I smoked a Henry Clay right through without dropping the ash.’ Boris concluded each letter with the words: ‘Love and kisses, Boris.’ Mathieu found it easy to imagine the state of mind in which Lola must have read these letters, her renewed but always anguished disappointment, and her constant effort to reassure herself: ‘He does really love me: the trouble is he doesn’t know how to say so.’ And he thought: ‘She kept them all the same.’ He carefully tied the packet up again and put it back in his pocket. ‘Boris must manage to replace it in the trunk without her seeing him.’ When the taxi stopped, it seemed to Mathieu that he was Lola’s natural ally. But he could not think of her otherwise than as belonging to the past. As he entered the Dôme, he had the impression that he was about to defend a dead woman’s memory.

Boris looked as though he had not moved since Mathieu’s departure. He was sitting sideways, his shoulders hunched, his mouth open, and his nostrils indrawn. Ivich was talking animatedly into his ear but she fell silent when she saw Mathieu enter. Mathieu came up and threw the packet of letters on the table.

‘There you are,’ said he.

Boris picked up the letters and promptly slipped them into his pocket. Mathieu eyed him with no friendly air.

‘I hope it wasn’t very difficult,’ asked Boris.

‘It wasn’t difficult at all, but look here: Lola isn’t dead.’

Boris raised his eyes, he looked as though he did not understand: ‘Lola isn’t dead,’ he repeated idiotically.

He sank deeper into his chair, he seemed utterly crushed: ‘Good Lord,’ thought Mathieu, ‘he had begun to get accustomed to it.’

Ivich looked at Mathieu with a glitter in her eye: ‘I would have bet on it!’ she said. ‘What was the matter with her?’

‘She had merely fainted,’ replied Mathieu stiffly.

They were silent. Boris and Ivich took their time to digest the news. ‘What a farce,’ thought Mathieu. Boris finally raised his head. His eyes were glassy.

‘Then... then she gave you the letters?’ he asked.

‘No: she was still unconscious when I took them.’

Boris drank a mouthful of cognac and put the glass down on the table. ‘Well!’ he said, as though speaking to himself.

‘She says she gets these attacks sometimes when she takes the stuff: and she told me you ought to have known it.’

Boris did not answer. Ivich seemed quite restored.

‘What did she say?’ she asked, with curiosity. ‘She must have been surprised when she saw you at the end of the bed?’

‘Not particularly. I told her Boris had been frightened and that he had come to ask my help. Naturally I said I had come to see what was the matter. You will remember that,’ he said to Boris. ‘Try not to give yourself away. And then you must manage to put the letters back without her seeing you.’

Boris passed a hand over his forehead. ‘It’s more than I can stand,’ he said, ‘I see her lying dead.’

Mathieu had had enough of this: ‘She wants you to go and see her at once.’

‘I... I believed she was dead,’ repeated Boris, as though to excuse himself.

‘Well, she isn’t!’ said Mathieu, with exasperation. ‘Take a taxi, and go to her.’

Boris did not move.

‘Do you understand?’ said Mathieu. ‘The poor woman is in great distress.’ He stretched out a hand to grasp Boris’s arm, but Boris jerked himself violently out of reach. ‘No!’ he exclaimed, in a voice so loud that a woman sitting outside turned round. He went on in a lower tone, but with a weak man’s dogged obstinacy: ‘I shan’t go.’

‘But,’ said Mathieu, with astonishment, ‘yesterday’s troubles are all over. She promised that there wouldn’t be any further mention of them.’

‘Yesterday’s troubles, indeed!’ said Boris with a shrug of his shoulders.

‘Well then?’

Boris eyed him malevolently. ‘She revolts me.’

‘Because you believed she was dead? Look here, Boris, pull yourself together, this is becoming ludicrous. You made a mistake, well then — that’s the end of it.’

‘I think Boris is right,’ said Ivich briskly. She added, and her voice was charged with a meaning that Mathieu did not understand: ‘I... in his place I would do just the same.’

‘But can’t you understand? He’ll be the death of her in good earnest.’

Ivich shook her head, there was a look of vexation on her sinister little face. Mathieu threw a hostile look at her: ‘She’s trying to get at him,’ he thought.

‘If he goes back to her it will be from a motive of pity,’ said Ivich. ‘You can’t ask him to do it: there’s nothing more repugnant, even to her.’

‘He should try at least to see her. He’ll soon find out what he feels.’

Ivich grimaced impatiently. ‘There are things that you just can’t grasp,’ she said.

Mathieu remained at a loss, and Boris took advantage of the pause: ‘I won’t see her again,’ he said in a determined voice. ‘For me, she is dead.’

‘But this is idiotic,’ exclaimed Mathieu.

Boris eyed him darkly: ‘I didn’t want to say it, but if I see her again I shall have to
touch
her. And that,’ he added with disgust, ‘I could not do.’

Mathieu felt his impotence. Wearily he looked at these two hostile little heads.

‘Very well, then,’ he said, ‘wait a bit... until the first reaction has faded. Promise me you’ll go and see her tomorrow or the day after.’

Boris seemed relieved. ‘That’s the idea,’ he said shiftily, ‘tomorrow.’

Mathieu was on the point of saying to him: ‘You might at least telephone to her to say you can’t come.’ But he refrained, thinking: ‘He won’t do it. I’ll telephone.’ He got up.

‘I must go and see Daniel,’ he said to Ivich. ‘When do your results come out? Two o’clock?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you like me to go and look at them?’

‘No, thanks. Boris will go.’

‘When shall I see you again?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Send me an express at once to say if you’re through.’

‘I will.’

‘Don’t forget,’ said Mathieu, departing. ‘Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye,’ they answered simultaneously.

Mathieu went down to the Dôme basement, to consult a Bottin. Poor Lola! Tomorrow, no doubt, Boris would return to the Sumatra. ‘But there’s this whole day that she’ll be waiting for him... I wouldn’t like to be in her skin.’

‘Will you get me Trudaine 00-35,’ he said to the large telephone lady.

‘Both boxes are occupied,’ she answered. ‘You’ll have to wait.’

Mathieu waited: through two open doors he could see the white tiles of the lavatories. Yesterday evening, outside certain other — ‘Toilets’... An odd recollection for a lover.

He felt very bitter against Ivich. ‘They’re afraid of death,’ he said to himself. ‘They may be fresh and neat, but there’s something sinister about their little souls, because they’re afraid. Afraid of death, of illness, of old age. They cling to their youth like a dying man to life. How many times have I seen Ivich making up her face at a mirror: she shudders at the possibility of wrinkles. They spend their time brooding on their youth, their plans are never more than short-term ones, as though they had only five or six years to live. And then... and then, Ivich talks about killing herself, but I don’t worry, she would never dare: they’ll just churn up the ashes. When all is said, my face is wrinkled, I’ve got the skin of a crocodile and cramp in my muscles, but I still have years to live... I begin to believe that it’s the likes of us who have been young. We tried to be men, and very silly we were, but I wonder whether the sole means of preserving one’s youth isn’t to forget it.’ But he remained ill at ease, he was aware of them up
there
, their heads together in whispering complicity; but they were fascinating, none the less.

‘Have you got my number yet?’ he asked.

‘You must wait a moment, sir,’ replied the large lady acidly. ‘I have a customer calling Amsterdam.’

Mathieu turned away, and walked a few steps: ‘I could not take the money.’ A woman came down the stairs, light and lively, one of those who say with girlish faces: ‘I must go and spend a penny.’ She caught sight of Mathieu, hesitated, and then continued on her way with long, gliding strides, the very embodiment of spirit and of perfume as she skimmed into the W.C.s. ‘I couldn’t take the money: my freedom is a myth. A myth — Brunet was right — and my life is built up from below with mechanical precision. A void, the proud and sinister dream of being nothing, of being always something other than I am. It is to escape my age that I’ve been playing about with those young creatures for the past year: in vain: I am a man, a grownup person, it is a grown-up person and a man of the world, who kissed little Ivich in a taxi. It is to escape from my class that I write in Left reviews; in vain: I am a bourgeois, I couldn’t take Lola’s money, I was scared by their taboos. It is to escape from my life that I sleep with all and sundry, by grace of Marcelle, and that I obstinately refuse to appear before the mayor; in vain: I am married, I live a domestic life.’ He had got hold of the Bottin, and as he abstractedly turned over its pages, he read: ‘Hollebecque, dramatic author, Nord 77-80.’ He felt sick, and he said to himself: ‘There, the sole freedom left to me is the desire to be what I am. My sole freedom is — to want to marry Marcelle.’ He was so weary of being tossed about among conflicting currents that he almost felt relieved. He clenched his fists, and addressing himself with all the gravity of a grown-up person, a bourgeois, a man of the world, and a family man, said: ‘I want to
marry
Marcelle.’

Pah! These were words, it was a childish, empty choice. ‘This, too,’ he thought, ‘this too is a lie. I need no will-power to get married: I have but to acquiesce.’ He closed the Bottin, and gazed in horror at the wreckage of his human dignity. And suddenly it seemed to him that he could
see
his freedom. It was out of reach, as cruel, youthful, and capricious as the quality of charms: and in measured terms it bade him throw Marcelle over. Only for an instant: he caught but a glimpse of this inexplicable freedom, that wore the aspect of a crime; indeed it frightened him, and it was so remote. He remained buttressed on his all-to-human will, on these all-to-human words: ‘I will marry her.’

‘Your number, sir,’ said the telephonist: ‘Second box.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mathieu.

He entered the box.

‘You must unhook the receiver, sir.’

Mathieu obediently did so.

‘Hullo! Trudaine 00-35? It’s a message for Madame Montero. No, don’t disturb her. You can give it her later on. It’s from Monsieur Boris. He can’t come.’

‘Monsieur Maurice?’ said the voice.

‘No, not Maurice: Boris. B for Bernard, O for Octave. He can’t come. Yes. That’s right. Thank you, good-bye, Madame.’

He went out, thinking as he scratched his head: ‘Marcelle must be in desperation, I ought to telephone to her while I’m about it.’ And he eyed the telephone lady with a hesitant air.