The Catalans: A Novel (18 page)

“You used not to. It used to be Bach or nothing for you, or Bach and English madrigals.”

“Yes. I was a very cultured young man, was I not?”

“You were a very solemn young man for a time. But do you really like that kind of music now, Alain?”

“Yes, I do. I like having my emotions thumped now and then. I have a record of Ravel’s
Bolero
in Prabang that I have nearly worn through. But one does not have to dislike the one to like the other, surely? They seem to me different things; or addressed to different parts of one’s body, at any rate.”

“Still, I should have thought that all that banging and leaping about would have appealed only to a more . .
. What did Xavier and Madeleine think of it?”

“Xavier was not able to come” (as you know very well), said Alain, turning to her with an ingenuous expression, “but Madeleine enjoyed it very much. It was the first concert she had been to.”

“So you pointed out all the instruments?”

“Yes, I pointed out all the instruments.”

“How kind you are, Alain.”

Thérèsine brought the cigarettes, and Alain, who had been expecting her with some impatience, lit a cigarette at once. He wondered how Aunt Margot would come round to the aquarium, which he had also visited. Ah, the luxury of a cigarette when one has waited for it, not too long, but longer than one wished. He drew deeply on the tight, frail tube, and it gave, subsided a little between his fingers and thumb as he forced the air in through the glowing end. The saltpeter spat and crackled, the little core of heat warmed the inside of his palm, and he swept all the smoke down into his lungs.

“She will certainly come round to it,” he thought, as he let the smoke out in a long sigh, “but how?”

But she disarmed him by saying “Your father had exactly that way of breathing in and blowing out like a dragon.” It took her some time to reach the aquarium: it took her half the length of the cigarette; but with a turn to the sea, the fish in it, and a transitional inquiry about the state of the car, she reached it.

“Yes,” he replied, “the aquarium was looking very well. There were sea horses.” He paused. “It will surprise you to learn that Madeleine was there too. Xavier was coming, but he was detained again, so I drove her over.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. And I was seen with her on the afternoon of the twenty-fifth as well; and I walked with her from the corner of the rue Pasteur as far as the wall on the evening of the twenty-seventh. I was alone with her from half-past nine on Wednesday . . .”

“That is not at all witty, Alain. Or at least if it is it does not appeal to my sense of humor. It is very clever and modern, no doubt . . .”

“No, my dear aunt,” said Alain, laughing, “you must not mind me. It is only that I cannot help wondering very much how it is that Côme can flaunt about all over the department in his car every week end with a different wench without anybody taking any notice, whereas if I am once seen talking to a young woman it is commented upon, reported, discussed; and if I walk five yards with her unaccompanied, well—”

“I do not know what you are talking about, Alain,” she said, “and I think we had better change the subject.”

She is still cross, reflected Alain: she never could bear being laughed at. However, I will make a handsome amend. And after a pause he said, “I think it will please you to know that I have come round to your way of thinking.”

She looked at him with the keenest interest, but she said nothing, and he continued, “As I was saying to the family this morning, I disapprove of Xavier’s idea, and I told him so.”

“I am so glad,” she said, quite thawed. “Do tell me what you said. Poor Xavier.”

“Yes, poor Xavier: that is true enough, my God. But nobody ever seems to have thought poor Madeleine . . .” He broke off, for Thérèsine was coming down the path again.

“It is Mme. d’Oultrera,” said the old maidservant. “She says the blue Virgin has got the moth.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” cried Aunt Margot. “Show her into the drawing room, Thérèsine. No, I left a bottle of brandy there. Beg her to step into the morning room, Thérèsine, and hurry, hurry. I shall have to go upstairs. Alain, my dear, do not move. Sit there in the cool with your nice cigarette and I will . . .” She hastened away.

“
TELL ME WHAT YOU SAID
.” Yes, that was what he intended to do: but it would be difficult, very difficult, to summarize, con
dense, report in the first person, and still convey something of the original. Not that it was particularly complex in this case, but there was always this difficulty of communication: the near-impossibility of conveying any but the most definite concepts, even to an attentive and sympathetic mind. Two and two make four; that, yes: but “I told him that I thought his conduct improper and he replied that he did not agree”—what did that convey? Or “It is a bronze of rather more than life-size, a nude lying on her back.” Or “It is a picture of mountains in rain and cloud: they are very steep and ragged and pine trees grow on their sides.” Or “The coda consists of a piu mosso version of the first subject, commencing pianissimo and working up to fortissimo.”

No: what one needed was a new method of communication altogether. For this kind of thing a film with a sound track would answer very well: he ran it through his mind.

S
CENE:
The first terrace of Xavier’s garden. Xavier and Alain are sitting in long wicker chairs, drinking Banyuls and eating little Spanish cakes. Enter from the left Dirty Côme and Renée: they are obviously ill at ease and they advance, mincing and scratching themselves, the whole length of the terrace. The first greetings are made. A silence.

R
ENEE:
We have come to talk to you very seriously, Xavier.

C
OME
: That’s right.

X
AVIER:
Listen to me, Côme, my friend: listen carefully.

(
A silence
.)

C
OME:
What to?

X
AVIER:
Just listen; that is all. If you do that you will not provoke me. You do not wish to provoke me, do you, Côme?

C
OME
(
looking apprehensively at his wife
): No.

R
ENEE:
We chose today, Xavier, because we happened to hear that that woman was away.

X
AVIER
(
aside, but audibly to Alain and probably to the others
): Sour yellow beast. (
To Renée
) Your informant was mistaken. If you will wait a minute . . . (
He rises
.)

R
ENEE
(
disconcerted but flouncing
): Oh indeed. No, don’t trouble yourself, Xavier. I think we had better go now. Côme. Good-by, Alain.

(
Exeunt
)

X
AVIER:
That got rid of them quick enough.

A
LAIN:
Poor Côme was in a muck sweat.

X
AVIER:
Poor devils. It is enough to make you wish each of them a dose of rat poison out of charity, seeing them together.

A
LAIN
: You are in a very good humor today, Xavier.

X
AVIER
: Yes. This divorce is getting along very well; faster than I had expected. It is nearly at the top of the list.

A
LAIN
: That is all you are waiting for, is it?

X
AVIER:
That is the essential. I must say that in my experience I have rarely seen such a simple, straightforward case—nothing to go wrong, no hidden snags, nothing to prevent a clear and immediate decision. Yet I am afraid of it: I know that nothing can go wrong, but I invent flaws in the legal presentation of the case and worry about them until I have got the papers again to reassure myself. I was on tenterhooks all through the formal attempt at reconciliation—I imagined a hundred ghastly accidents. But of course he was not even represented.

(
A pause
.)

A
LAIN
: I cannot help feeling—you will not mind my saying so—that you have a somewhat one-sided view of marriage. Or rather, of this marriage.

X
AVIER:
One-sided? I do not think I understand you.

A
LAIN
: By one-sided I mean selfish.

X
AVIER:
Selfish? Upon my word, Alain . . . I propose giving the material advantages of a marriage that any family in the whole province would welcome gladly, any family, the d’Oultreras or anyone. I say nothing of the care with which I would surround her, nor the affection. Consider the material side alone—you do not have to have half your experience of the world to appreciate the importance of it. Think of the position I can give. That sounds conceited, even a little absurd: but if you take it in relation to Saint-Féliu it is less so. Think of what I can do for her family. No, I intend to give all I can—give with both hands, and give spiritually as well as materially. That is not very selfish, I think?

A
LAIN
: That is not really what I was thinking of. Though in passing I may say that the position you would have to give would be very much less considerable after such a marriage than before it.

X
AVIER
: What a familiar sound that has.

A
LAIN
: I dare say it has. And I will say this, too, Xavier, that I
do
speak from interested motives, at least to some extent, and I do speak with something of the family’s voice. I am not joking in the least when I say that all the Roig blood in me curdles, and rightly, when I hear you talking of giving with both hands—giving more than you have a right to give. I mean it in sober earnest, Xavier, when I say that you have a greater duty to the family than you realize. I say this to clear my conscience; for I know you hardly believe it.

X
AVIER
: You are right: I do not think you are fundamentally interested in money or property.

A
LAIN
(
shrugging
): Well— When I say one-sided I mean that you seem to take Madeleine’s inclination and consent very much for granted, and her subsequent happiness. Have you reflected enough, I wonder, on the fact that you are at least middle-aged, and that neither you nor I could be called a beauty?

X
AVIER
: I do not take her inclination or consent for granted at all, Alain: believe me, they have caused me more thought and trepidation than ever they cause half your romantic lovers. But even if I had done so, I still think that her subsequent happiness would be secure. I am middle-aged, I agree. But that is not without its advantages: for one thing, I am no longer afraid of clichés, and I can say, and believe, that this is the sort of marriage in which love will come afterward. I do not pretend that she is passionately in love with me: of course she is not, and it would be very unsuitable if she were. But I think I may say, without being too fatuously complacent, that she has a sincere friendship for me, a real liking; and that is the best foundation for a marriage.

A
LAIN
: It is not very romantic.

X
AVIER
: So much the better. She had enough of romance with that young swine Cortade. As you say, I am no beauty: well, he was, and what did it amount to? People who live together no longer see one another after a year or two. I think that all this talk of good looks is very much overdone, and I am sure that most of the current notions about romantic love are so much twaddle, piffle, flim-flam. You know as well as I do that ‘romance’ is a recent invention, a leisured invention, and that it hardly touched the lower classes at all until the coming of the cinema and these appalling magazines, ‘books,’ for the semi-literate. Our fathers and grandfathers married out of prudence and good sense: it answered admirably well. And even now, you know how and why nearly all peasants marry. No, no; the tinselly nonsense has hardly any relation to what is really felt: mutual interest and subsequent good-liking are infinitely more important. I tell you, Alain, I am deeply convinced that one grain of genuine affection is worth all your poetry and Saturday-evening raptures. Furthermore, I will say this: for ninety-nine people out of a hundred it hardly matters at all whom they marry. Providing the man has a reasonably pleasant character and an adequate income, one is as good as another. You make the mistake, I think, that so many sentimental people make: you attribute too much personality to individuals, much too much importance to those few little traits that make one man superficially different from the next. Perhaps it is a natural reaction from your impersonal, objective work.