The Counterfeiters (20 page)

Then she went on to complain that he wanted to make her go into a home; which would be all the more painful to her, she added, as he was quite incapable of living alone and doing without her care. This was said in a tearful tone, which was only too obviously hypocritical.

Whilst she was continuing her grievances, the drawing-room
door opened gently behind her and La Pérouse came in, without her hearing him. At his wife’s last words he smiled at me ironically, and touched his head with his hand to signify she was mad. Then, with an impatience—a brutality even—of which I should not have thought him capable, and which seemed to justify the old woman’s accusations (but it was due too to his having to raise his voice to a shout in order to make himself heard):

“Come, Madam,” he cried, “you ought to understand that you are tiring this gentleman with your talk. He didn’t come to see you. Leave the room.”

The old lady protested that the arm-chair she was sitting in was her own and that she was not going to quit it.

“In that case,” went on La Pérouse with a grim chuckle,
“we
will leave
you.”
Then, turning to me, he repeated in gentler tones, “come, let us leave her.”

I made a sketchy and embarrassed bow, and followed him into the next room—the same one in which I had paid him my last visit.

“I am glad you heard her,” he said; “that’s what it’s like the whole day long.”

He shut the window.

“There’s such a noise in the street, one can’t hear oneself speak. I spend my time shutting the windows and Madame de La Pérouse spends hers opening them again. She declares she’s stifling. She always exaggerates. She refuses to realize that it’s hotter out of doors than in. And yet I’ve got a little thermometer; but when I show it to her, she says that figures prove nothing. She wants to be right even when she knows she’s wrong. Her main object in life is to annoy me.”

He himself, while he was speaking, seemed to me a little off his balance; he went on with growing excite
a grievance against me. All her judgments are warped. I’ll just explain to you how it is: You know our impressions of outside images come to us reversed and that there’s an apparatus in our brains which sets them right again. Well, Madame de La Pérouse has no such apparatus for setting them right. In her brain they
remain
upside down. You can see for yourself how painful it is.”

It was certainly a great relief to him to explain himself and I took care not to interrupt him. He went on:

“Madame de la Pérouse has always eaten much too much. Well, now she makes out that it’s I who eat too much. If she sees me presently with a bit of chocolate (it’s my chief nourishment) she’ll be certain to mutter, ‘Munching again! …’ She spies on me. She accuses me of getting up in the night to eat on the sly, because she once surprised me making myself a cup of chocolate in the kitchen.… What am I to do? When I see her opposite me at table, falling ravenously upon her food, as she does, it takes away my appetite entirely. Then she declares I’m pretending to be fastidious just to torment her.”

He paused, and then in a sort of lyrical outburst:

“Her reproaches amaze me!… For instance, when she is suffering from her sciatica, I condole with her. Then she stops me, shrugs her shoulders and says: ‘Don’t pretend you have a heart.’ Everything I do or say is in order to give her pain.”

We had seated ourselves, but all the time he was speaking, he kept getting up and sitting down again, in a state of morbid restlessness.

“Would you believe that in each of these rooms there are some pieces of furniture which belong to her and others to me? You saw her just now with her armchair. She says to the charwoman, when she’s doing the room, “No, that’s Monsieur’s chair; don’t touch that.” And the other day, when by mistake I put a bound music-book on a little table which belongs to her, Madame
knocked it on to the ground. Its corners were broken.… Oh, it can’t last much longer.… But, listen …”

He seized me by the arm, and lowering his voice:

“I have taken steps. She is continually threatening me if I ‘go on!’ to take refuge in a home. I have set aside a certain sum of money which ought to be enough to pay for her at Sainte-Périne’s; I hear it’s an excellent place. The few lessons I still give, bring me in hardly anything. In a little time I shall be at the end of my resources; I should be forced to break into this sum—and I’m determined not to. So I have made a resolution.… It will be in a little over three months. Yes; I have fixed the date. If you only knew what a relief it is to think that every hour it draws nearer.”

He had bent towards me; he bent closer still:

“And I have put aside a Government bond. Oh, it’s not much. But I couldn’t do more. Madame de La Pérouse doesn’t know about it. It’s in my bureau in an envelope directed to you, with the necessary instructions. I know nothing about business, but a solicitor whom I consulted, told me that the interest could be paid directly to my grandson, until he is of age, and that then he would have the security. I thought it wouldn’t be too great a tax on your friendship to ask you to see that this is done. I have so little confidence in solicitors!… And even, if you wished to make me quite easy, you would take charge of the envelope at once.… You will, won’t you?… I’ll go and fetch it.”

He trotted out in his usual fashion and came back with a large envelope in his hand.

“You’ll excuse me for having sealed it; for form’s sake,” said he. “Take it.”

I glanced at it and saw under my name the words “To be opened after my death” written in printed letters.

“Put it in your pocket quick, so that I may know it’s
safe. Thank you.… Oh, I was so longing for you to come! …”

I have often experienced that, in moments as solemn as this, all human emotion is transformed into an almost mystic ecstasy, into a kind of enthusiasm, in which my whole being is magnified, or rather liberated from all selfishness, as though dispossessed of itself and depersonalized. Those who have never experienced this will certainly not understand me. But I felt that La Pérouse understood. Any protestation on my part would have been superfluous, would have seemed unbecoming, I thought, and I contented myself with pressing the hand which he gave me. His eyes were shining with a strange brightness. In his free hand, in which he had at first been holding the envelope, was another piece of paper.

“I have written his address down here. For I know now where he is. At Saas-Fée. Do you know it? It’s in Switzerland. I looked for it on the map, but I couldn’t find it.”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a little village near the Matterhorn.”

“Is it very far?”

“Not so far but that I might perhaps go there.”

“Really? Would you really?… Oh, how good you are!” said he. “As for me, I’m too old. And besides, I can’t because of his mother.… All the same, I think …” He hesitated for a word, then went on: “that I should depart more easily, if only I had been able to see him.”

“My poor friend.… Everything that is humanly possible to do to bring him to you, I will do. You shall see little Boris, I promise you.”

“Thank you!… Thank you!”

He pressed me convulsively in his arms.

“But promise me that you won’t think of …”

“Oh, that’s another matter,” said he, interrupting
me abruptly. Then immediately and as if he were trying to prevent me from going on by distracting my attention:

“What do you think, the other day, the mother of one of my pupils insisted on taking me to the theatre! About a month ago. It was a matinée at the
Théâtre Français
. I hadn’t been inside a theatre for more than twenty years. They were giving
Hernani
by Victor Hugo. You know it? It seems that it was very well acted. Everybody was in raptures. As for me, I suffered indescribably. If politeness hadn’t kept me there, I shouldn’t have been able to stay it out.… We were in a box. My friends did their best to calm me. I wanted to apostrophize the audience. Oh! how can people? How can people? …”

Not understanding at first what it was he objected to, I asked:

“You thought the actors very bad?”

“Of course. But how can people represent such abominations on the stage?… And the audience applauded. And there were children in the theatre—children, brought there by their parents, who knew the play.… Monstrous! And that, in a theatre subsidized by the State!”

The worthy man’s indignation amused me. By now I was almost laughing. I protested that there could be no dramatic art without a portrayal of the passions. In his turn, he declared that the portrayal of the passions must necessarily be an undesirable example. The discussion continued in this way for some time; and as I was comparing this portrayal of the passions to the effect of letting loose the brass instruments in an orchestra:

“For instance, the entry of the trombones in such and such a symphony of Beethoven’s which you admire.… ”

“But I don’t, I don’t admire the entry of the trombones,”
cried he, with extraordinary violence. “Why do you want to make me admire what disturbs me?”

His whole body was trembling. The indignant—the almost hostile tone of his voice surprised me and seemed to astonish even himself, for he went on more calmly:

“Have you observed that the whole effect of modern music is to make bearable, and even agreeable, certain harmonies which we used to consider discords?”

“Exactly,” I rejoined. “Everything must finally resolve into—be reduced to harmony.”

“Harmony!” he repeated, shrugging his shoulders. “All that I can see in it is familiarization with evil—with sin. Sensibility is blunted; purity is tarnished; reactions are less vivid; one tolerates; one accepts.… ”

“To listen to you, one would never dare wean a child.”

But he went on without hearing me: “If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one’s youth, one’s greatest indignation would be for what one has become.”

It was impossible to start on a teleological argument; I tried to bring him back to his own ground:

“But you don’t pretend to restrict music to the mere expression of serenity, do you? In that case, a single chord would suffice—a perfect and continuous chord.”

He took both my hands in his, and in a burst of ecstasy, his eyes rapt in adoration, he repeated several times over:

“A perfect and continuous chord; yes, yes; a perfect and continuous chord.… But our whole universe is a prey to discord,” he added sadly.

I took my leave. He accompanied me to the door and as he embraced me, murmured again:

“Oh! How long shall we have to wait for the resolution of the chord?”

Part Two
         
Saas-Fée

Monday

M
Y
D
EAR
O
LD
O
LIVIER
,

First I must tell you that I’ve cut the “bachot.” I expect you understood as much when I didn’t turn up. I shall go in for it next October. An unparelleled opportunity to go travelling was offered me. I jumped at it and I’m not sorry I did. I had to make up my mind at once—without taking time to reflect—without even saying good-bye to you. A propos, my travelling companion tells me to say how sorry he is he had to leave without seeing you again. For do you know who carried me off? You’ve guessed it already.… It was Edouard—yes! that same uncle of yours, whom I met the very day he arrived in Paris, in rather extraordinary and sensational circumstances, which I’ll tell you about some day. But everything in this adventure is extraordinary, and when I think of it my head whirls. Even now, I can hardly believe it is true and that I am really here in Switzerland with Edouard and … Well! I see I must tell you the whole story, but mind you tear my letter up and never breathe a word about it to a soul.

Just think, the poor woman your brother Vincent abandoned, the one you heard sobbing outside your door (I must say, it was idiotic of you not to open it) turns out to be a great friend of Edouard’s and moreover is actually a daughter of Vedel’s and a sister of your friend Armand’s. I oughtn’t to be writing you all this, because a woman’s honour is at stake, but I should burst if I didn’t tell someone … So, once more, don’t breathe a word! You know that she married recently; perhaps you know that shortly after her marriage she fell ill and went for a cure to the South of France. That’s where she met Vincent—in the sanatorium at Pau. Perhaps you know that, too. But what
you don’t know is that there were consequences. Yes, old boy! She’s going to have a child and it’s your clumsy ass of a brother’s fault. She came back to Paris and didn’t dare show herself to her parents; still less go back to her husband. And then your brother, as you know, chucked her. I’ll spare you my comments; but I can tell you that Laura Douviers has not uttered a word against him, either of reproach or resentment. On the contrary, she says all she can think of to excuse his conduct. In a word, she’s a very fine woman, with a very beautiful nature. And another very fine person is Edouard. As she didn’t know what to do or where to go, he proposed taking her to Switzerland; and at the same time he proposed that I should go with them, because he didn’t care about travelling
tête à tête
, as he is only on terms of friendship with her. So off we started. It was all settled in a jiffy—just time to pack one’s suit-case and for me to get a kit (for you know I left home without a thing). You can’t imagine how nice Edouard was about it; and what’s more he kept repeating all the time that it was I who was doing him a service. Yes, really, old boy, you were quite right, your uncle’s perfectly splendid.