The Counterfeiters (47 page)

Contents

FIRST NOTEBOOK

SECOND NOTEBOOK

APPENDIX

Newspaper Clippings

Letters

Extracts from Lafcadio’s Journal

Identification of the Demon

17 June 1919

For two days I have been wondering whether or not to have my novel related by Lafcadio.
¹
Thus it would be a narrative of gradually revealed events in which he would act as an observer, an idler, a perverter. I do not think this would necessarily restrict the scope of the book, but it would prevent me from approaching certain subjects, entering certain circles, influencing certain characters.… On the other hand it would probably be foolish to collect into a single novel everything life offers me and teaches me. However closely packed I want this book to be, I cannot hope to get everything in. And yet this desire still bothers me. I am like a musician striving, in the manner of César Franck, to juxtapose and overlap an andante theme and an allegro theme.

I think I have enough material for two books, and I am starting this notebook in an effort to distinguish the elements of widely differing tonality.

The story of the two sisters. The elder, against the will of her parents (she elopes) marries a vain, worthless person who nevertheless has enough polish to win over the family after he has won over the girl. The family, deceived by the swarm of virtues their son-in-law is able to simulate, forgives her and makes due amends. Meanwhile the girl discovers little by little the basic
mediocrity of this person to whom she has tied herself for life. She hides from everyone the scorn and disgust she feels for him, takes it upon herself as a point of honor to show off her husband to best advantage, to hide his inadequacy, and to make up for his blunders, so that she alone knows upon what a void her “happiness” rests. Everywhere this couple is cited as an ideal one; and the day when, at the end of her rope, she would like to leave this puppet and live apart, it is she whom everyone blames. (The question of the children to be examined separately.)
²

I have noted elsewhere (gray notebook) the case of the seducer who eventually becomes the prisoner of the deed he planned to perpetrate—after he has drained all its attractions in advance in his imagination.

There would not necessarily have to be two sisters. It is never good to
oppose
one character to another, or to contrive antitheses (deplorable device of the romantics).

Never present
ideas
except in terms of temperaments and characters. I should, by the way, have this expressed by one of my characters (the novelist)—“Persuade yourself that opinions do not exist outside of individuals. The trouble with most people is that they think they have freely accepted or chosen the opinions they profess, which are actually as predetermined and ordained as the color of their hair or the odor of their breath.… ”

Show why, to young people, the preceding generation seem so staid, so resigned, and so reasonable that it seems doubtful if they in their own youth were ever tormented by the same aspirations, the same fevers, ever cherished the same ambitions or hid the same desires.

The censure of those who “come around” for the
person who remains faithful to his youth and does not
give up
. He is apparently the one in the wrong.

I am writing on a separate page the first vague outlines of the plot (one of the possible plots).

The two characters remain nonexistent so long as they are not baptized.

There always comes a moment, just before the moment of composition, when a subject seems stripped of all attraction, all charm, all atmosphere, even bare of all significance. At last, losing all interest in it, you curse that sort of secret pact whereby you have committed yourself, and which makes it impossible for you to back out honorably. In spite of this, you would still rather quit.…

I say “you,” but actually I do not know whether others feel this way. It is probably similar to the condition of the convert who, the last few days, on the point of approaching the altar, feels his faith suddenly falter and takes fright at the emptiness and dryness of his heart.

19 June

Probably it is not very clever to place the action of this book
before
the war, or to include
historical
considerations; I cannot be retrospective and immediate at the same time. Actually I am not trying to be
immediate
; if left to my inclination, I should rather be
future
.

“A precise portrait of the prewar state of mind”—no, even if I could succeed in that, it is not what I am trying to do. The future interests me more than the past, but even more what belongs neither to tomorrow nor to yesterday but which in all times can be said to belong to today.

Cuverville, 20 June
³

A day of abominable lethargy, the like of which, alas, I think I have never known except here. The influence of the weather, of the climate? I do not know; I drag myself from one task to another, incapable of writing the least letter, of understanding what I read, or even of doing the simplest piano scale correctly; incapable even of sleeping when, in a desperate attempt to escape from myself, I stretch out on my bed.

As a matter of fact, the moment I start to lie down, I feel my thoughts spring to life; and, ashamed of having put my day to such poor use, I prolong my reading of Browning’s
Death in the Desert
until midnight. I miss many details, but it sets my brain in ferment like the headiest of wines.

which I copy out for the use of Lafcadio.

6 July 1919

Work cut short by the arrival at Cuverville of Copeau,
⁴
back from America. I go to fetch him at Havre.

I read him the still tentative opening of the book; became rather clearly aware of the use I could make of this unusual form.

It would be wisest not to worry too much about the
sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life.

I think I can find a better setting than a café for the conversation on general topics I should like to use to open the book. I was tempted by the very banality of the locale. But it would be better not to make use of any setting unrelated to the action.
Everything that cannot be of use encumbers
. Thus this morning I have been considering the Luxembourg Gardens—more precisely, that part of the park where the traffic in counterfeit gold pieces takes place behind Lafcadio’s back and without his suspecting it—at the very time he is listening to and noting down that conversation on general topics, so very serious, which, however, one small definite fact is presently to render meaningless. Édouard, who sent him there to spy, is to tell him:

“My boy, you don’t know how to observe; this is the important thing that was going on”—thereupon producing the box full of counterfeit coins.

Furious with myself for having let so much time slip away without profit for the book. I tried in vain to persuade myself that it is ripening. I ought to be thinking about it more and not allow myself to be distracted by the petty details of everyday life. The truth is that it has not advanced a step since Cuverville. At most I have felt more urgently the need of establishing a relationship between the scattered elements. Yet I should like to avoid the artificiality of a “plot”; but events must fit into a pattern independently of Lafcadio: behind his back, so to speak. I expect too much from inspiration; it should come as the result of seeking. I am willing that the solution to a problem should appear in a sudden flash, but only after it has been studied at length.

This morning I took out once again the various newspaper clippings concerning the case of the counterfeiters. I am sorry not to have saved more of them. They are from the
Journal de Rouen
(Sept. 1900).
⁵
I think I shall have to begin from there without trying any longer to construct
a priori
.

I am saving the following, which I have a notion to use as the motto for the first book:

When the judge asked Fréchaut if he had been a member of the Luxembourg “gang”:

“Let’s call it ‘the coterie,’ your honor,” he replied warmly. “It was a gathering where we dealt in counterfeit money, I don’t deny that; but we were principally concerned with questions of politics and literature.”

Essential to connect this to the case of the anarchist counterfeiters of 7 and 8 August 1907—and to the sinister account of the schoolboys’ suicides at Clermont-Ferrand (5 June 1909). Weld this into a single homogeneous plot.

The pastor, upon learning that his son at twenty-six is no longer the chaste youth that he thought, exclaims: “Would to heaven he had been killed in the war! Would to God he had never been born!”

What judgment can a decent man make of a religion that puts such words into the mouth of a father?

It is out of hatred for this religion, this morality that oppressed his whole youth, out of hatred for this puritanism he himself has never been able to shed, that Z. strives to debauch and pervert the pastor’s children.
Some rancor is involved in this. Forced and counterfeit sentiments.

The counterfeiters’ company (the “coterie”) admits only
compromised
persons. Each one of the members must offer as a forfeit something by which he might be blackmailed.

Herewith a definition of friendship I got from Méral:
⁶
“A friend,” he says, “is somebody with whom you’d be happy to do a bad deed.”

X. (one of the pastor’s sons) is led to gamble by the debaucher. To provide for the expense of M.’s childbirth (his final charitable action) he had set aside a comfortable and painfully acquired sum saved (or perhaps diverted from the family budget). He loses it; then, several days later, wins part of it back. But an odd thing takes place: during the time he had given it up for lost, he became so resigned to the loss that when he wins it back, the money seems no longer assigned to M. and he thinks only of spending it.

The periods will have to be clearly distinguished:

1
ST
. A noble (or charitable) motive that he advances to clothe a cheap trick. He knows very well that his family will need the money, but he is not diverting it out of selfishness (the sophism of the virtuous motive).

2
ND
. The sum recognized as insufficient. Chimerical hope and urgent necessity of augmenting it.

3
RD
. Necessity, after the loss, of feeling “above misfortune.”

4
TH
. Renunciation of the “virtuous motive.” Theory of the gratuitous and
unmotivated
action. Immediate joy.

5
TH
. Winner’s intoxication. Absence of
reserve
.

I am working in Mme M.’s library—one of the most delightful laboratories one could imagine. Only the fear of interfering with her own work now hampers my studious satisfaction. The idea of obtaining anything whatsoever at someone else’s expense paralyzes me. (Incidentally, this is no doubt one of the best of moral curbs; but it is with difficulty that I persuade myself that others can find the same joy as I do from aiding and encouraging.)

The first big question to be examined is this: can I portray all the action of my book through Lafcadio? I do not think so. Probably the point of view of Lafcadio is too narrow to make it desirable to use it all the way through without a break. But what other way is there of presenting
the remainder?
It might be foolish to seek to avoid at all costs the simple impersonal narration.

Yesterday I spent the day convincing myself that I cannot make everything take place through Lafcadio; but I should like to have successive interpreters: for example, Lafacadio’s notes would occupy the first book; the second book might consist of Édouard’s notebook; the third of an attorney’s file, etc.