The Incorrigible Optimists Club (9 page)

You will have some idea of the degree of decrepitude into which I have fallen when I tell you that I spend my days and part of my nights playing cards with three guys who I reckoned were mentally retarded six months ago and who are now my best friends. I've decided to test the basic principles of Saint-Justisme on them. After all, if one has to fight for the oppressed, one might as well ask them their opinions and what they want. That would avoid us making the same unfortunate mistakes again. I'm lucky to have with me an ideal sample of the broad mass of the French working class: a farmer's son from the Ardèche, a toolmaker who works in an engineering factory in Saint-Etienne and a truck driver from Le Havre. Educational level: bac minus six. Their conversation is mainly about girls, soccer and old bangers. Their main preoccupation is food. They couldn't care less about politics. All the more reason to try and discover what's in their heads.

My book progresses. I've just finished the third exercise book. Two more and my theory will be coherent and irrefutable. The pace is slowing. I have to resolve some problems that have serious consequences. I had not weighed up the extent of Saint-Just's phrase: ‘Many opponents will have to be killed for this cause to triumph.'
I hoped that we would be able to confine ourselves to a few hard core facts, to the symbols of the old order. We must have no illusions as to the enemy's capacity to resist, for he will use all means available to hang on to power. It will be a real revolution or none at all. Many will die, and I don't know whether people are prepared to spill so much blood nowadays. Will it be worth our while? Certainly. Will the people be with us? I am less sure. Oppressed as they are, they
won't dare rebel for fear of losing the miserable advantages the bourgeoisie has granted them. Why fight for slaves who lick the hands of their masters? To tell the truth, I'm in quite a state about this question. How far should we go to make men happy in spite of themselves? What's happening in China is instructive and promising and will serve as a guideline. A profound revolution is taking place and we cannot measure its consequences. As soon as I am demobbed, I shall go there in order to see what they're doing. Perhaps it's my Western over-sensitivity that prevents me from keeping up with the pace of the revolution. An intermediary stage may be necessary.

Remind that little bugger Michel of what Albert Einstein said: ‘Don't worry about your difficulties with maths, I can assure you that mine are far greater.' They have reopened the school which had been closed for over a year and the commanding officer has asked me to give a lesson on the binomial system to the local children with a lieutenant from Poitiers who is teaching them French and has decided to stage Racine's Bérénice. These kids are eager to learn and they grasp things very quickly. We're doing one term's syllabus in a month. We find ourselves educating the children of our enemies. Is that logical?

It makes me laugh to think of Franck freezing his balls off in Germany. The war will be over before he gets here. I've written to him. He hasn't replied. I don't know whether he got my letter…

Cécile stopped reading. She remained pensive. I took the letter. I reread it with difficulty. Pierre's handwriting was like a doctor's.

‘You mustn't worry. He's in a quiet spot.'

‘There's something that's not quite right. There must be another approach. One has to find the right key. Meanwhile, ask your father to pay for private lessons.'

Cécile went off to make some café au lait. The coffee pot was heating up. She had made a shopping list.

‘You could go yourself.'

‘Don't you want to do it for me any more?'

‘You don't get out of your house any more. It's at least a week since you set foot outside.'

‘Are you going to do the shopping for me or not?'

She handed me the list with two ten-franc notes.

‘Don't bother with the list. I know it. Coffee, milk, honey bread and apples. You're going to get ill eventually if you don't eat anything else.'

‘Don't you start too.'

She took me by the shoulders and shook me. She was unexpectedly strong for her size.

‘Listen to me, little bro'. I don't need to be looked after, or to be protected. Not by you, not by anyone. I'm old enough to look after myself. If you want us to remain friends, never ever tell me what I must do! Is that clear?'

‘As you wish. But you're too thin.'

She pushed me onto the sofa, threw herself on me and started to tickle me. Cécile loved tickling me because I'm very ticklish. She laughed as much as I did. The more I tried to protect myself, the more she went on. I couldn't do the same to her. She's not ticklish. In between hiccups and howls, I managed to free myself by hoisting her up at arm's length. I held her there, suspended. I was perspiring and out of breath. So was she. My arms were trembling. I held on for ten seconds. I let go. She fell on top of me. We were still laughing, helplessly glued to one another, exhausted and happy. We drank our umpteenth café au lait of the day with her Breton biscuits and her honey bread.

‘You haven't told me what you thought of Pierre's theory, about Saint-Justisme.'

‘He's absolutely right.'

‘It will be a dictatorship!'

‘What is it these days? A democracy?'

‘It's not possible. You can't have a programme to slaughter people.'

‘You have to know what you want in life!'

It was a dangerous subject. It was best to change the conversation. I didn't want to argue with her.

‘I must go. My mother's coming back this evening.'

*

On Saturday, we did a photographic session in the Luxembourg. I only had one roll of film. She posed in front of the Médicis fountain, the sculptures in the park, and beneath the bandstand. It was a fine day. I took my time focusing, finding the correct angle and getting the light right. She was on edge. She told me to hurry up, that she would look horrible and she would tear up the photos. She sat down by the side of the pond. I shot her from close up, thirty centimetres away from her face. Her hair was tousled. There was a ray of sunshine that lit her from the side. At that moment, she smiled. Her eyes smiled. She stood out against the sky and the trees. She was calm and radiant. I caught her sideways glance. They're the best photographs I've taken of her. I showed them to her. She didn't tear them up.

13

M
y mother and Juliette returned from Algeria looking tanned. While we froze under leaden skies, they had sunshine all the time. We questioned them about the incidents there. They had not seen very much. Except for Juliette. But my father forbade her to open her mouth.

‘Am I not allowed to speak?'

‘I don't want to hear you.'

‘You'll never know what I've seen!'

Only my mother was allowed to express herself. There were parachutists at every crossroads. From time to time, they were woken in the middle of the night by explosions from bomb attacks and they tried to figure out in which part of the town the explosion had occurred. Once, on the Avenue Bugeaud, they were doing the rounds of the shops with Louise when someone wearing a white cap fired twice at a man who was sitting on a bench reading a newspaper. The gunman dashed off in a Peugeot 203 that shot away at top speed. The man on the bench slumped down. No one came to his aid. The passers-by walked around him as though he did not exist. A stream of blood flowed along the pavement as far as the gutter. But everyone went on their way. Apart from that, it was peaceful. Philippe had returned from Algeria feeling reassured. The French army had the situation in hand. You could put your trust both in it and in De Gaulle. Very soon, there would be no further incidents.

‘We'll never hand over a French department. The uprising has bled itself dry. Their leaders are in prison.'

Maurice and he even reckoned it was a good time to invest in Algeria. There was a lot of money to be made. Most people were prepared to sell their furniture for a crust of bread, but everything had to be carried out discreetly, in collusion with the OAS, the paramilitary organisation which did not want the French to leave or give up their properties. My father did not agree. But he was not allowed to have his say. If it were a
question of investing, he would have preferred to open a branch there.

‘My dear Paul, you've got ideas above your station,' Philippe maintained. ‘You've embarked on Pharaonic building works, and I'm not the pharaoh. I won't pay one franc more than the estimate. Anything in excess, you'll have to pay from your own pocket. Mind you, it's my own fault; because of your education, you know nothing about business. I should not have left you in charge of this project on your own.'

My father turned towards my mother, who said nothing.

‘Paul, you should have thought about it,' she acknowledged. ‘How could you have commissioned these building works without asking us our opinion? Where's it all going to end? You've put us in an impossible situation.'

I cleared the table after dinner, and, in the kitchen, my mother stared at me: ‘You don't look well, Michel, what have you been doing during the holidays?'

‘Maths.'

She looked at me in surprise. She didn't believe me.

‘Every day. I learned my book by heart. I can recite it for you, if you like.'

‘Have you made progress?'

‘It's a complicated thing, maths. It's not through learning that you understand, and when you don't understand, you don't know why. I've been told I have a psychological blockage.'

‘Is that all?'

‘Apparently, I'm not responsible for it.'

‘Whose fault is it then?'

My father had joined us in the kitchen with a pile of plates. I almost replied that it was a problem of authority, but it was best to keep my mouth shut so as not to get into endless explanations. The two causes of my mathematical blockage gazed at me and awaited my answer. I shrugged my shoulders. That's the disadvantage of psychoanalysis – knowing the cause of the problem doesn't resolve it.

14

W
hen I arrived at the Balto, I sensed an unusual atmosphere. The baby-foot tables were unoccupied and so were the pinball machines. Everyone was leaning against the bar and talking in hushed voices. At the Club, nobody was playing chess. They were there, sitting side by side, in silence, being careful not to make any noise. Silence was the norm there, but this was strained. Sartre was sitting alone at a table, looking pensive. A cigarette at the corner of his lips had gone out without him taking a puff. A length of ash drooped from it. In front of him were two empty glasses and a third which he drained down to the last drop. Jacky came in, his tray laden with drinks, which he distributed to each table with unaccustomed delicacy. When he passed close to the table at which Sartre sat, he held out his empty glass. Jacky stood stock still, stared at him in an apologetic manner, and left the Club. He returned a few moments later with a bottle of Black and White, which he placed on the table. Sartre looked up. Jacky filled his glass with whisky. Sartre nodded in gratitude, began to drink in small sips, then stopped and didn't move, his eyes staring into space; his shoulders slumped, and he looked tired. His right hand, which lay on his lap, held the empty glass. Those who came in to the Club melted into the all-pervading silence. They stared at Sartre sympathetically. He picked up a pen and scribbled something in a shaky hand. I went over to Igor Markish, whom I had got along with during the holidays. He gave me a knowing smile and laid his hand on my shoulder as if to console me. I whispered in his ear: ‘Has there been a death in his family?'

Igor looked surprised by my question and replied in a barely audible voice: ‘Camus is dead.'

‘Albert Camus?'

‘In a car. He died instantly. Terrible loss.'

‘He looks shattered. They must have been very close.'

‘After the war, they were friends. When
L'Homme révolté
came out, Sartre demolished Camus. He was contemptuous and hurtful. They fell out.'

‘A girlfriend gave me the book. I've not read it yet.'

Sartre was scribbling away nervously. You could hear the furious scratching of his pen on the paper. He kept crossing out and starting again. He stood up wearing a gloomy expression and knocked back his glass in one. He seemed restless and he departed, leaving the sheet of paper on the small table.

Together with Igor and the others, we walked over to the table to see what he had written. The page was almost illegible, with crossings-out everywhere. A few lines stood out. Igor began to read:

… We had quarrels, he and I. A quarrel doesn't matter – even if you never see one another again – it is just another way of living together without losing sight of one another in the narrow world that is given to us. This did not prevent me from thinking of him, from sensing his gaze on the book, or the newspaper that he read, and wondering: What does he think of it? What does he think of it at this moment? … His stubborn humanism, narrow and pure, austere and sensual, waged an uncertain war against the massive and shapeless events of the times. But conversely, through his dogged rejections, he reasserted, at the height of our age, against the Machiavellians, against the golden calf of realism, the existence of the moral act…

As though he did not believe what he had just heard, Pavel took the sheet of paper from Igor and deciphered it for him. Vladimir read it next and handed it to Werner. The sheet went round the group. Everyone had a different view. Imré did not understand: ‘I thought they were enemies? What does “another way of living together without losing touch” mean? Either you're angry or you're not!'

‘It's a bit late to have regrets,' said Vladimir.

They started to discuss as they usually did, talking without taking the trouble to listen to one another, but lowering their voices. Virgil was inveighing against Sartre. Gregorios supported him. When they argued
among themselves, they didn't bother with the French that they coped with more or less proficiently and reverted to their native tongues, thus enabling them to insult each other more easily. Sartre returned, accompanied by Jacky. The noise died down immediately. He saw us huddled together, reading what he had just written. He did not look pleased, and he hurried over towards us, grabbed the page from Leonid's hands, put it in his briefcase, took out a handful of banknotes with which to pay the bill and left the Club without a word. They all stood there, transfixed. I asked Igor why they looked so shocked.

‘Because herein lie all our problems.'