Читать книгу The Mandarins - Simone Beauvoir de - Страница 10

I looked at the little sketch, and I was discouraged. Two months earlier I had said to the child, ‘Draw a house,’ and he had drawn a cottage with a roof, a chimney, smoke; but not a window, not a door, and surrounding the house was a tall black fence with pointed bars. ‘Now, draw a family,’ and he had drawn a man holding a little boy by the hand. And today again he had sketched a house without a door, surrounded by pointed black bars. We were getting nowhere. Was it a particularly difficult case, or was it I who didn’t know how to handle it? I put the drawing into his file. Didn’t I know how? Or didn’t I want to? Perhaps the child’s resistance merely reflected the resistance I felt in myself. It horrified me to have to drive that stranger, who had died two years earlier at Dachau, from his son’s heart. ‘If that’s the way it is, I ought to give up the case,’ I said to myself, standing silently beside my desk. I had two full hours ahead of me which I could have used to sort and file my notes, but I couldn’t make up my mind to get down to it. It’s true I’ve always been the kind to ask myself a lot of questions. Why does healing so often mean mutilating? What value does personal adjustment have in an unjust society? But nevertheless, it has always fascinated me to devise solutions for each new case. My objective isn’t to give my patients a false feeling of inner peace; if I seek to deliver them from their personal nightmares, it’s only to make them better able to face the real problems of life. And each time I succeeded, I felt I had accomplished something useful. The task is huge, it requires everyone’s co-operation. That’s what I thought yesterday. But it’s all based on the premise that every intelligent being has a part to play in a history that is steadily leading the world towards happiness. Today I no longer believe in that beautiful harmony. The future escapes us; it will shape itself without us. Well then, if we have to be content with the present, what difference does it make whether little Ferdinand once more becomes carefree and happy like other children? ‘I shouldn’t be thinking such things,’ I told myself. ‘If I go on like this, it won’t be long before I’ll have to close up my office.’ I went into the bathroom and brought back a bowl of water and an armful of old newspapers. In the fireplace, balls of paper were burning dully; I knelt down, moistened the printed sheets, and began crumpling them up. This sort of task was less distasteful to me than it used to be; with Nadine’s help and an occasional hand from the concierge’s wife, I kept the apartment in fairly good shape. At least while I was crumpling those old newspapers, I knew that I was doing something useful. The trouble was that it kept only my hands busy. I did succeed in driving little Ferdinand, as well as all thoughts of my profession, from my mind. But I gained little by it – once more the record began turning insistently in my head: There aren’t enough coffins left in Stavelot to bury all the children murdered by the SS. We had escaped; but elsewhere it had happened. They had hastily hidden the flags, buried their guns; the men had fled into the fields the women had barricaded themselves behind their doors. And in the streets abandoned to the rain, the sound of their raucous voices could be heard. This time they hadn’t come as magnanimous conquerors; they had returned with hate and death in their hearts. And then they went off again, leaving nothing behind of the festive village but burned-out houses and heaps of little bodies.

A sudden gust of cold air made me shiver; Nadine had opened the door.

‘Why didn’t you ask me to help you?’

‘I thought you were getting dressed.’

‘I finished dressing long ago,’ she said. She knelt beside me and grabbed a newspaper. ‘Are you afraid I don’t know how to do this? Don’t worry; it’s not beyond me.’

The fact is that she really wasn’t very good at it; she wet the paper too much, didn’t wad it enough. But nevertheless I should have asked her to help. I examined her critically. ‘Let me dress you up a little,’ I said.

‘For whom? Lambert?’

I took a shawl and an antique brooch from my dresser and put them on her. Then I handed her a pair of pumps with leather soles, a present from a patient who believed herself cured.

Nadine hesitated. ‘But you’re going out tonight, too. What are you going to wear?’

‘No one ever looks at my feet,’ I said laughing.

She took the shoes and grumbled, ‘Thanks.’ I almost answered, ‘You’re welcome,’ as one would to a stranger. My attentions, my generosity made her feel uncomfortable, for she wasn’t really grateful and she reproached herself for not being so. I felt her wavering between gratitude and suspicion as she awkwardly crumpled the newspaper. And after all, she was right in distrusting me; my devotion, my generosity were the most unfair of my wiles: I was seeking to escape remorse at the expense of making her feel guilty. Remorse because Diego was dead, because Nadine didn’t have any pretty dresses, because sullenness made her ugly; remorse because I didn’t know how to make her obey me and because I didn’t love her enough. It would have been more honest of me not to smother her with kindness. Perhaps I might have been able to comfort her if I simply took her in my arms and said, ‘My poor little daughter, forgive me for not loving you more.’ If I had held her in my arms, perhaps it would have protected me against those little bodies which had gone unburied.

Nadine raised her head. ‘Have you spoken to Father again about that secretarial job?’

‘No, not since the day before yesterday,’ I answered, hastily adding: ‘The magazine doesn’t come out until April. There’s still plenty of time.’

‘But I want to know now,’ Nadine said, throwing a ball of paper into the fire. ‘I really don’t understand why he’s against it.’

‘He told you; he thinks you’d be wasting your time.’ A job, adult responsibilities – I personally thought it would be good for Nadine. But Robert had more ambitious plans for her.

‘And chemistry, don’t you think I’m wasting time with that?’ she said, shrugging her shoulders.

‘No one’s forcing you to study chemistry.’

Nadine had chosen chemistry for the sole purpose of upsetting us; she succeeded only in punishing herself.

‘It isn’t so much chemistry that bores the hell out of me,’ she said. ‘It’s just being a student. Father doesn’t seem to realize it, but I’m much older than you were when you were my age. I want to so something real.’

‘I agree with you,’ I replied. ‘You know that. But just be patient. If your father sees you’re not going to change your mind he’ll end up by saying yes.’

‘He may say yes, but you can bet he’ll say it grudgingly,’ Nadine replied sulkily.

‘We’ll convince him,’ I said. ‘Do you know what I’d do if I were you? I’d learn to type at once.’

‘I can’t start now,’ Nadine replied. She paused, gave me a rather defiant look, and added, ‘Henri is taking me to Portugal with him.’

I was taken by surprise. ‘Did you decide that yesterday?’ I asked in a voice which didn’t hide my disapproval.

‘My decision was made a long time ago,’ Nadine said. Aggressively she added, ‘Naturally, you disapprove, don’t you? You disapprove because of Paula. Isn’t that right?’

I rolled one of the moist paper balls between the palms of my hands. ‘I think you’re going to make yourself very unhappy.’

‘That’s my business.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose it is.’

I tried to force myself to hold my tongue. I knew my silence annoyed her, but she provokes me when, in that biting voice of hers, she spurns the very explanations she is anxious to hear. She wants me to force her hand, but I do not like to play her game. Nevertheless, I gave it a try. ‘Henri doesn’t love you,’ I said. ‘He’s in no mood just now to fall in love.’

‘But Lambert, Lambert would be a dumb enough idiot to marry me, is that it?’ she said angrily.

‘I’ve never tried to push you into marriage,’ I answered. ‘But the fact of the matter is that Lambert does love you.’

‘That’s not true,’ she said, interrupting me. ‘He doesn’t love me. Not only has he never asked me to sleep with him, but the other night at the party, when I practically came right out and asked him, he turned me down flat.’

‘That’s because he wants other things from you.’

‘If I don’t appeal to him, that’s his business. Besides, I can understand someone being difficult to please after having had a girl like Rosa. Believe me when I tell you I try to make allowances for that. Just don’t keep telling me he’s so completely gone on me,’ Nadine said, her voice rising.

‘Do whatever you like!’ I said. ‘You’re free to do as you please. What more can you ask for?’

She cleared her throat, as she always did when she was nervous. ‘As far as Henri and myself is concerned, it’s only a matter of a little adventure. As soon as we get back, we stop seeing each other.’

‘Honestly, Nadine, do you believe that?’

‘Yes, I do believe it,’ she said with too much conviction.

‘After you’ve spent a month with Henri you’ll want to hold on to him.’

‘You’re wrong.’ Again a look of defiance appeared in her eyes. ‘If you want to know, I slept with him last night and it did absolutely nothing to me.’

I turned my eyes away; I would rather not have known about it. ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ I said, trying not to reveal my embarrassment. ‘I’m sure that when you get back you won’t want to leave him – and he’ll have other ideas about it.’

‘That remains to be seen,’ she said.

‘Ah! So you admit it; you are hoping to hold him. But you’re only deceiving yourself, you know. All he wants at the moment is his freedom.’

‘There’s a game to be played. I enjoy it.’

‘Calculating, manoeuvring, watching, waiting – is that the kind of thing you enjoy? And you don’t even love him!’

‘I may not love him,’ she said, ‘but I want him.’ She threw a handful of paper balls into the fireplace. ‘With him at least I’ll live. Can’t you understand that?’

‘To live, you need no one but yourself,’ I said angrily.

She looked around the room. ‘Do you call this living? Frankly, my poor mother, do you believe you ever lived? What an existence! Talking to Father half the day and treating crackpots the other half.’ She stood up and brushed off her knees. ‘I do foolish things sometimes,’ she continued in an exasperated tone of voice, ‘I don’t deny it. But I’d rather end my days in a whorehouse than go through life wearing immaculate kid gloves like a good little bourgeoise. You never take off these gloves of yours, do you? You spend your time giving people advice, but what do you know about men? And I’m damned certain you never look at yourself in the mirror and never have nightmares.’

Attacking me was the tactic she always employed when she felt guilty or had doubts about herself. When she saw I didn’t intend to answer, she walked towards the door, stopped, hesitated a moment, and then turned around and asked in a calmer voice, ‘Will you come and have tea with us?’

‘Just call me whenever you’re ready.’

I stood up. I lit a cigarette. What could I do? I didn’t dare do anything. When Nadine first began seeking and fleeing Diego in bed after bed, I tried to do something about it. But she had discovered unhappiness too brutally; it had left her too bewildered with revolt and despair for anyone to exercise any control over her. When I tried to talk to her, she stopped her ears, she cried, she ran away. She didn’t return to the flat until the next morning. Robert, at my request, tried to reason with her. That evening, she didn’t go out to meet her American captain; she stayed at home alone in her room. But the next day she disappeared, leaving a note which said, ‘I am leaving.’ Robert searched for her all that night, all the next day, and all of another night, while I waited at home. The waiting was agonizing. At four o’clock in the morning a bartender in one of the Montparnasse cafés telephoned. I found Nadine, dead drunk and with a black eye, stretched out on a seat on one of the booths of the bar. ‘Let her have her freedom. It will only be worse if we try to restrain her,’ Robert said to me. I had no choice. If I had continued to fight her, Nadine would have begun to hate me and would purposely have defied me. But she knows I disapprove of her conduct and that I gave in against my will. She knows and she holds it against me. And maybe she’s not entirely wrong. Had I loved her more, our relationship might have been different. Perhaps I would have known how to stop her from leading a life of which I disapprove. For a long while I stood there looking at the flames, repeating to myself, ‘I don’t love her enough.’

I hadn’t wanted her; it was Robert who wanted to have a child right away. I’ve always held it against Nadine that she upset my life alone with Robert. I loved Robert too much and I wasn’t interested enough in myself to be moved by the discovery of his features or mine on the face of that little intruder. Without feeling any particular affection, I took notice of her blue eyes, her hair, her nose. I scolded her as little as possible, but she was well aware of my reticence; to her, I’ve always been suspect. No little girl has ever fought more tenaciously to triumph over her rival for her father’s heart. And she’s never resigned herself to belonging to the same species as I. When I told her she would soon begin menstruating and explained the meaning of it to her, she listened attentively, but with a fierce trapped look in her eyes. Then she violently threw her favourite vase to the floor, shattering it to bits. After her first period, her anger was so powerful that she didn’t bleed again for another eighteen months.

Diego had created a new climate between us; at last she owned a treasure which belonged to her alone. She felt herself my equal, and a friendship was born between us. But afterwards, everything grew even worse. Just now, everything is worse.

‘Mother.’

Nadine was calling me. As I walked down the corridor, I thought to myself, ‘If I stay too long, she’ll say I monopolise her friends; but if I leave too soon, she’ll think I’m insulting them.’ I opened the door. In the room were Lambert, Sézenac, Vincent, and Lachaume. There were no women; Nadine had no girl friends. They were sitting around the electric heater, drinking ersatz coffee. Nadine handed me a cup of black, bitter water.

‘Chancel was killed,’ she said abruptly.

I hadn’t known Chancel very well, but ten days earlier I had seen him laughing with the others around the Christmas tree. Maybe Robert was right; the distance between the living and the dead really isn’t very great. And yet, like myself, those future corpses who were drinking their coffee in silence appeared ashamed to be so alive. Sézenac’s eyes were even more blank than usual; he looked like a Rimbaud without brains.

‘How did it happen?’ I asked.

‘Nobody knows,’ Sézenac replied. ‘His brother got a note saying he died on the field of honour.’

‘Do you think there’s any chance he did it on purpose?’

Sézenac shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe.’

‘And maybe no one asked him for his advice,’ Vincent said. ‘They’re far from stingy with human material, our generals. They’re great and generous lords, you know.’ In his sallow face, his bloodshot eyes looked like two gashes; his mouth was a thin scar. One failed to notice at first that his features were actually fine and regular.

Lachaume’s face, on the other hand, was at once calm and tormented, like a craggy rock. ‘It’s all a question of prestige,’ Lachaume said. ‘If we still want to play at being a great power, we must have a respectable number of dead.’

‘Besides,’ Vincent said, ‘disarming the members of the Resistance was a neat trick. But let’s face it. If they could be quietly liquidated, that’d suit the great lords even better,’ Vincent added, his scar opening into a sort of smile.

‘What are you trying to insinuate?’ Lambert asked severely, looking Vincent straight in the eyes. ‘De Gaulle ordered de Lattre to get rid of all the Communists? If that’s what you want to say, say it. At least have that much courage.’

‘No need for any order,’ Vincent replied. ‘They understand each other well enough without exchanging words.’

Lambert shrugged his shoulders. ‘You don’t believe that yourself.’

‘Maybe it’s true,’ Nadine said aggressively.

‘Don’t be silly. Of course it’s not true.’

‘What’s there to prove it isn’t?’ she asked.

‘Ah, ha! So you’ve finally picked up the technique!’ Lambert said. ‘You make up a fact out of whole cloth, and then you ask someone to prove it’s false! Obviously I can’t swear to the fact that Chancel wasn’t killed by a bullet in the back.’

Lauchaume smiled. ‘That’s not what Vincent said.’

That was the way it always went. Sézenac would hold his tongue, Vincent and Lambert would engage in a squabble, and then at the right moment Lachaume would intervene. Usually, he would chide Vincent for his leftist views and Lambert for his petit-bourgeois prejudices. Nadine would side with one camp or the other, depending upon her mood. I avoided getting entangled in their argument; it was more vehement today than usually, probably because Chancel’s death had more or less unnerved them. In any case, Vincent and Lambert weren’t made to get along with each other. Lambert had an aura of gentlemanliness about him, while Vincent, with his fur-collared jacket and his thin unhealthy face, looked rather like a hoodlum. There was a disturbing coldness in his eyes, but nevertheless I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he had killed real men with a real revolver. Every time I saw him I thought of it, but I could never actually bring myself to believe it. As for Lauchaume, he, too, may have killed, but if he did, he hadn’t told anyone and it hadn’t left any visible mark.

Lambert turned towards me. ‘You can’t even have a talk with friends any more,’ he said. ‘It’s no fun living in Paris, the way it is now. Sometimes I wonder if Chancel wasn’t right. I don’t mean getting yourself shot up, but going off and doing some fighting.’

Nadine gave him an angry look. ‘But you’re hardly ever in Paris as it is!’

‘I’m here enough to find it a lot too grim for my taste. And even when I’m at the front, believe me, I don’t feel especially proud of what I’m doing.’

‘But you did everything you could to become a war correspondent,’ she said bitterly.

‘I liked it better than staying back here, but it’s still a half measure.’

‘If you’re fed up with Paris, no one’s holding you here,’ Nadine said, her face twisted with rage. ‘Go on and play the hero.’

‘It’s no better and no worse than some other games I know of,’ Lambert grumbled, giving her a look heavy with meaning.

Nadine eyed him up and down for a moment. ‘You know, you wouldn’t look bad as a stretcher case, with bandages all over you.’ Sneringly, she added, ‘Only don’t count on me to come visiting you in the hospital. Two weeks from now I’ll be in Portugal.’

‘Portugal?’

‘Perron is taking me along as his secretary,’ she replied casually.

‘Well, well! Isn’t he the lucky one,’ Lambert said. ‘He’ll have you all to himself for a whole month!’

‘I’m not as repulsive to everyone as I am to you,’ Nadine retorted.

‘Yes, nowadays men are easy,’ Lambert muttered between his teeth. ‘As easy as women.’

‘You’re a boor!’ Nadine shouted.

Irritably, I wondered how they could let themselves be carried away by their childish manoeuvres. I felt certain they could have helped each other to live again; together they could have succeeded in conquering those memories that both united and separated them. But perhaps that was precisely why they tore each other apart: each saw his own faithlessness in the other, and they hated themselves for it. In any event, interfering would have been the worst possible blunder. I let them continue their squabble and quietly left the room. Sézenac followed me into the hall.

‘May I have a word with you?’ he asked.

‘Go ahead.’

‘There’s a favour,’ he said, ‘a favour I’d like to ask of you.’

I remember how impressive he looked on the twenty-fifth of August, with his full beard, his rifle, his red sash – a true soldier of 1848. Now his blue eyes were dead, his face puffy; when I shook his hand, I had noticed that his palm was moist.

‘I haven’t been sleeping well,’ he said haltingly. ‘I have … I have pains. A friend of mine once gave me an opium suppository and it helped a lot. Only the pharmacists won’t sell it without a prescription …’ He looked at me pleadingly.

‘What kind of pains?’

‘Oh, everywhere. In my head. And worst of all I have nightmares …’

‘You can’t cure nightmares with opium.’

His forehead, like his hands, grew moist. ‘I’ll be honest with you. I have a girl friend, a girl I like a lot. In fact, I’m thinking of marrying her. But I … I can’t do anything with her without taking opiates.’

‘Opium is a narcotic, you know. Do you use it often?’ I asked.

He pretended to be shocked by my question. ‘Oh, no! Only once in a while, when I spend the night with Lucie.’

‘Well, that’s not too bad then. You know it’s very easy to become addicted to those things.’

He looked at me pleadingly, sweat beading his brow.

‘Come see me tomorrow morning,’ I said. ‘I’ll see if I can give you that prescription.’

I went back to my room. He was obviously pretty much an addict already. When had he begun drugging himself? Why? I sighed. Another one I could stretch out on the couch and try to empty. At times, they got on my nerves, all those recliners. Outside, in the world, standing on their own two feet, they did the best they could to play at being adults. But here, in my office, they again became infants with dirty behinds, and it was up to me to wash their childhood away. And yet I spoke to them in an impersonal voice, the voice of reason, of health. Their real lives were elsewhere; mine too. It wasn’t surprising that I was tired of them – and of myself.

I was tired. ‘Immaculate kid gloves,’ Nadine had said. ‘Distant, intimidating,’ were Scriassine’s words. Is that how I appear to them? Is that how I am? I recalled my childhood rages, the pounding of my adolescent heart, the feverish days of that month of August. But all that was now of the past. The fact is that nothing was stirring inside me any more. I combed my hair and touched up my make-up. You can’t go on living indefinitely in fear; it’s too tiring. Robert had begun a new book, and he was in high spirits. I no longer awakened at night in a cold sweat. Nevertheless, I was depressed. I could see no reason for being sad. It’s just that it makes me unhappy not to feel happy; I must have been badly spoiled. I took my purse and gloves and knocked at Robert’s door. I hadn’t the least desire to go out.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ I asked. ‘Wouldn’t you like me to build a little fire?’

He pushed back his chair and smiled at me. ‘I’m fine,’ he said.

Naturally. Robert always felt fine. For two years, he happily sustained himself on sauerkraut and rutabagas. He was never cold; it seemed almost as if he produced his own warmth, like a yogi. When I return around midnight, he’ll still be writing, wrapped in his plaid blanket. And he’ll be surprised: ‘What time is it, anyhow?’ Up to now, he had spoken to me only vaguely of his new book, but I gathered he was satisfied with the way it was going. I sat down.

‘Nadine just told me something pretty surprising,’ I said. ‘She’s going to Portugal with Perron.’

He looked up at me quickly. ‘Does it upset you?’

‘Yes. Perron isn’t the kind of person you pick up and drop as you please. She’s going to become much too attached to him.’

Robert placed his hand on mine. ‘Don’t worry about Nadine. First of all, I’d be very surprised if she became attached to Perron. But in any case, it won’t take her long to console herself if she does.’

‘I hope she isn’t going to spend her whole life consoling herself!’ I said.

Robert laughed. ‘There you go again! You’re always shocked when you think of your daughter sleeping around, like a boy. I did exactly the same thing at her age.’

Robert refused to face the fact that Nadine wasn’t a boy. ‘It’s different,’ I said. ‘The reason Nadine grabs one man after another is that she doesn’t feel she’s alive when she’s alone. That’s what worries me.’

‘Listen, we know why she hates to be alone. She can still see Diego too clearly.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not only because of Diego.’

‘I know. You think it’s partially our fault,’ he said sceptically. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘she’ll change; she has lots of time to change.’

‘Let’s hope so.’ I looked at Robert pleadingly. ‘It’s very important to her to have something to do that really interests her. Give her that secretarial job. She spoke to me about it again just now. She wants it badly.’

‘It’s not very exciting,’ Robert said. ‘Typing envelopes and filing all day long. It’s a crime to waste her intelligence on a thing like that.’

‘But she’ll feel she’s being useful; it will give her confidence,’ I said.

‘She could do so much better! She could continue to study.’

‘Just now what she needs is to do something. And she’d make a good secretary.’ I paused a moment and then added, ‘You mustn’t ask too much of people.’

For me, Robert’s demands had always been a stimulant, but they only succeeded in discouraging Nadine. He gave her no orders; rather, he confided in her, expected things of her, and she played along with him. She had read too many heavy books when she was too young; she had been too precociously part of adult conversations. And so, after a while, she tired of that severe routine. At first, she was disappointed in herself, and now she seemed to enjoy avenging herself by disappointing Robert.

He looked perplexed, as he always did whenever he detected a note of reproach in my voice.

‘If you really believe that’s what she wants … Well, you know best.’

‘I do believe it,’ I said.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Consider it done.’

He had given in too easily. That proved that Nadine had succeeded only too well in disappointing him. When he can no longer give himself without reserve to something that means much to him, Robert wastes no time in losing all interest in it.

‘Of course, a job that would make her completely independent of us would be even better,’ I said.

‘But that isn’t what she really wants; she simply wants to play at being independent,’ Robert said sharply. He no longer felt like speaking of Nadine, and I was unable to kindle his enthusiasm for a project of which he disapproved. I let it drop.

‘I really can’t understand Perron going on that trip,’ he said in a livelier tone.

‘He wants a holiday,’ I replied. ‘After all,’ I added spiritedly, ‘he has the right to enjoy himself a little. He certainly did enough …’

‘He did more than I did,’ Robert said. ‘But that’s not the question.’ He looked at me intently. ‘In order for the SRL to get going, we’ve got to have a newspaper.’

‘I know,’ I said. Then I added hesitantly. ‘I wonder …’

‘What?’

‘If Henri will ever turn his paper over to you. It means so much to him.’

‘It isn’t a question of his turning it over to us,’ Robert replied.

‘But it is a question of his submitting to the orders of the SRL.’

‘He’s already a member. And it would certainly be to his advantage to adopt a clearly defined programme; a newspaper without a political programme just doesn’t make sense.’

‘But that’s their idea.’

‘You call that an idea?’ Robert said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘To perpetuate the spirit of the Resistance without taking sides! That sort of jargon is fine for some idiot like Luc. The spirit of the Resistance! It makes me think of the spirit of Locarno. But I’m not worried; Perron isn’t the kind to go in for spiritualism. He’ll end up by going along with us. But meanwhile we’re losing valuable time.’

I was afraid Robert was due for quite a surprise. When he’s deeply involved in a project, he thinks of people as mere tools. But Henri had given himself body and soul to that paper; it was his personal achievement and he wasn’t going to be casual about letting anyone dictate policy to him.

‘Why haven’t you spoken to him about it yet?’ I asked.

‘All Henri has on his mind these days is that trip of his.’

Robert looked so unhappy that I suggested, ‘Try to make him stay.’

For Nadine’s sake, it would have made me happy to see him give up the trip. But I’d have felt sorry for Henri; he was counting on it so much.

‘You know how he is,’ Robert said. ‘When he’s stubborn, he’s stubborn. I’d better wait until he gets back.’ He drew the blanket over his knees. ‘I’m not saying this to chase you out,’ he added cheerfully, ‘but usually you hate to be late …’

I got up. ‘You’re right; I should leave now. Are you sure you don’t want to come?’

‘Oh, no! I haven’t the least desire to talk politics with Scriassine. Maybe he’ll spare you, though.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ I said.

During those long periods when Robert shut himself in with his work, I often went out without him. But that evening, as I hurried into the cold, into the dark, I was sorry that I had accepted Scriassine’s invitation. I understood perfectly well why I hadn’t declined: I knew my friends much too well and I was tired of always seeing the same faces. For four years we had lived side by side; it kept one warm. But now, our intimacy had grown cold. It smelled musty and it benefited no one. I had reacted to the appeal of something new. But what would we find to say to each other? Like Robert, I didn’t feel like talking politics.

I stopped in the lobby of the Ritz and looked at myself in a mirror. What with clothes rationing, to be well dressed took a lot of doing. I had chosen not to bother myself about it at all. In my threadbare coat and wooden-soled shoes, I didn’t look very exciting. My friends accepted me as I was, but Scriassine had just come from America where the women always seem to be so well groomed. He would surely notice my shoes. ‘I shouldn’t have let myself go like this,’ I thought.

Naturally, Scriassine’s smile didn’t betray him. He kissed my hand, something I hate. A hand is even more naked than a face; it embarrasses me when someone looks at it too closely.

‘What will you have?’ he asked. ‘A martini?’

‘A martini will do.’

The was bar filled with American officers and well-dressed women. The heat, the smell of cigarettes, and the strong taste of the gin went to my head immediately, and I was glad to be there. Scriassine had spent four years in America, the great liberating nation, the nation in which fountains spout streams of fruit juices and ice cream. I questioned him avidly and he patiently answered all my questions. We had a second round of martinis and then we had dinner in a little restaurant where I gorged myself without restraint on rare roast beef and cream puffs. Scriassine, in turn, interrogated me; it was difficult to answer his too-precise questions. If I tried to recapture the taste of my daily existence – the smell of cabbage soup in the curfew-barricaded house, the ache in my heart whenever Robert was late in returning from a clandestine meeting – he would sharply interrupt me. He was a very good listener; he made you feel as if he were carefully weighing each of your words. But you had to speak for him, not for yourself. He wanted practical information: how did we go about making up false papers, printing L’Espoir, distributing it? And he also asked me to paint vast frescoes for him: What was the moral climate in which we had lived? I tried my best to satisfy him, but I’m afraid I didn’t succeed very well; everything had been either worse or more bearable than he imagined. The real tragedies hadn’t happened to me, and yet they haunted my life. How could I speak to him of Diego’s death? The words were too sad for my mouth, too dry for Diego’s memory. I wouldn’t have wanted to relive those past four years for anything in the world. And yet from a distance they seemed to take on a sombre sweetness. I could easily understand why Lambert was bored with this peace which gave us back our lives without giving us back our reasons for living. When we left the restaurant and stepped out into the pitch-black cold, I remembered how proudly we used to face the nights. Now, I longed for light warmth; I, too, wanted something else. Without provocation, Scriassine plunged into a long diatribe; I wished he would change the subject. He was furiously upbraiding de Gaulle for his trip to Moscow. ‘The thing that’s really serious,’ he said to me accusingly, ‘is that the whole country seems to approve of it. Look at Perron and Dubreuilh, honest men both, walking hand in hand with the Communists. It’s heartbreaking for someone who knows.’

‘But Robert isn’t with the Communists,’ I said, attempting to calm him down. ‘He’s trying to create an independent movement.’

‘Yes, I know; he spoke to me about it. But he made it perfectly clear that he doesn’t intend working against the Stalinists. Beside them, but not against them!’ Scriassine said crushingly.

‘You really wouldn’t want him to be anti-Communist, would you?’ I asked.

Scriassine looked at me severely. ‘Did you read my book The Red Paradise?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then you must have some idea of what would happen to us if we made Stalin a present of Europe.’

‘But there’s no question of giving Europe to Stalin,’ I said.

‘That’s precisely the question.’

‘Nonsense! The question is how to win the struggle against reaction. And if the left begins to split up, we won’t have a ghost of a chance.’

‘The left!’ Scriassine said ironically. ‘Let’s not talk politics,’ he added with an abrupt gesture of finality. ‘I hate talking politics with a woman.’

‘I didn’t start it,’ I said.

‘You’re absolutely right,’ he replied with unexpected gravity. ‘Please excuse me.’

We went back to the Ritz bar and Scriassine ordered two whiskies. I liked the taste; it was something different. And as for Scriassine, he, too, had the advantage of being new to me. The whole evening had been unexpected, and it seemed to emit an ancient fragrance of youth. Long ago there had been nights that were unlike others; you would meet unknown people who would say unexpected things. And, occasionally, something would happen. So many things had happened in the last five years – to the world, to France, to Paris, to others. But not to me. Would nothing ever happen to me again?

‘It’s odd being here,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘The heat, the whisky, the noise, and those uniforms …’

Scriassine glanced around him. ‘I hate this place. They requisitioned a room for me here because I’m a reporter for a Franco-American magazine,’ he explained. ‘Fortunately, it won’t be long before it becomes too expensive for me. And then I’ll be forced to get out,’ he added with a smile.

‘Can’t you leave without being forced?’

‘No. That’s why I find money such a corrupting influence.’ A burst of laughter brightened his face. ‘As soon as I get hold of some, I can’t wait to get rid of it.’

A bald-headed little man with mild and gentle eyes stopped at our table. ‘Aren’t you Victor Scriassine?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Scriassine answered. I caught a mistrustful look in his eyes – and at the same time a gleam of hope.

‘Don’t you recognize me? Manès Goldman. I’ve aged a lot since Vienna. I promised myself that if I ever met you again I would say thank you, thank you for your book.’

‘Manès Goldman! Of course!’ Scriassine said warmly. ‘Are you living in France now?’

‘Since ’35. I spent a year in the camp at Gurs, but I got out just in time …’ His voice was even more gentle than his eyes, so gentle in fact that it seemed almost dead. ‘I don’t want to disturb you any longer; I just want to say I’m very happy to have shaken the hand of the man who wrote Vienna in Brown.’

‘Nice seeing you again,’ Scriassine said.

The little Austrian walked quietly away and went out the glass door behind an American officer. Scriassine followed him with his eyes.

‘Another defeat!’ he said abruptly.

‘A defeat?’

‘I should have asked him to sit down, should have spoken to him. He wanted something and I don’t even know his address, didn’t think to give him mine,’ Scriassine said, his voice choked with anger.

‘If he wants to see you again, he’ll surely come here.’

‘He wouldn’t dare. It was up to me to make the first move, to make him sit down and question him. And the thing that really hurts is that it would have been so easy! A year at Gurs! And I suppose he spent the other four hiding. He’s my age, and he looks like an old man. He was hoping I could do something for him. And I just let him walk away!’

‘He didn’t seem disappointed. Maybe he did only want to thank you.’

‘That was just an excuse,’ Scriassine said, emptying his glass. ‘It would have been so simple to ask him to sit down. God! when you think of all the things you could do and yet somehow never do! All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn’t come fast enough. Instead of being open, you’re closed up tight. That’s the worst sin of all – the sin of omission.’ He spoke as if I weren’t present, in an agonizing monologue of remorse. ‘And during those four years, I was in America, warm, safe, well-fed.’

‘You couldn’t have stayed here,’ I said.

‘I could have gone into hiding too.’

‘I really don’t see what good that would have done.’

‘When my friends were exiled to Siberia, I was in Vienna; when others were being slaughtered by the Brown Shirts in Vienna, I was in New York. What’s so damned important about staying alive? That’s the question that needs answering.’

I found myself moved by Scriassine’s voice. We, too, felt ashamed whenever we thought of the deportees. No, we had nothing to blame ourselves for; it was just that we hadn’t suffered enough.

‘The misfortunes you don’t actually share … well, it’s as if you were to blame for them,’ I said. ‘And it’s a horrible thing to feel guilty.’

Suddenly Scriassine smiled at me with a look of secret connivance. ‘That depends,’ he said.

For a moment I studied his crafty, tormented face. ‘Do you mean there are certain feelings of remorse that shield us from others?’

Scriassine studied me in turn. ‘You’re not so dumb, you know. Generally, I dislike intelligent women, maybe because they’re not intelligent enough. They always want to prove to themselves, and to everyone else, how terribly clever they are. So all they do is talk and never understand anything. What struck me the first time I saw you was that way you have of keeping quiet.’

I laughed. ‘I didn’t have much choice.’

‘All of us were doing a lot of talking – Dubreuilh, Perron and myself. You just stood there calmly and listened.’

‘Listening is my job,’ I said.

‘Yes, I know, but you have a certain way with you.’ He nodded his head. ‘You must be an excellent psychiatrist. If I were ten years younger, I’d put myself in your hands.’

‘Are you tempted to have yourself analysed?’

‘It’s too late now. A fully developed man who’s used his defects and blemishes to piece himself together. You can ruin him but you can’t cure him.’

‘That depends on the sickness.’

‘There’s only one sickness that really amounts to anything – being yourself, just you.’ An almost unbearable sincerity suddenly softened his face, and I was deeply touched by the confiding sadness in his voice.

‘There are people a lot sicker than you,’ I said briskly.

‘In what way?’

‘There are some people who make you wonder when you look at them, how they can possibly live with themselves. Unless they’re complete idiots, they should horrify themselves. You don’t seem like that at all.’

Scriassine’s face remained grave. ‘Do you ever horrify yourself?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But I’m not very introspective,’ I added with a smile.

‘That’s why you’re so relaxing,’ Scriassine said. ‘The moment I met you I found you relaxing. You gave the impression of being a well-brought-up young girl who always listens quietly while the grown-ups are talking.’

‘I have an eighteen-year-old daughter, you know.’

‘That doesn’t mean anything. Besides, I find young girls insufferable. But a woman who looks like a young girl – that I find charming!’ He examined me very closely. ‘It’s a funny thing. The women in the crowd you go around with are all quite free. But you – one wonders if you’ve ever deceived your husband.’

‘Deceived! What a horrid word! Robert and I are completely free to do as we please; we hide nothing from each other.’

‘But have you ever made use of that freedom?’

‘Occasionally,’ I said. I finished my drink, trying to conceal my embarrasment. There really weren’t very many occasions; in that respect, I was quite different from Robert. Picking up a good-looking girl in a bar and spending an hour with her seemed perfectly normal to him. As for me, I could never have accepted a man for a lover if I didn’t feel I could become friends with him – and my requirements for friendship are quite exacting. I had lived the last five years in chastity, with no regrets, and I believed I would go on that way forever. It seemed natural to me for my life as a woman to be ended; there were so many things that had ended, forever …

Scriassine silently studied me for a moment and then said, ‘In any case, I’ll bet there haven’t been many men in your life.’

‘That’s true,’ I replied.

‘Why not?’

‘I suppose the right ones just didn’t come along.’

‘If the right ones didn’t come along, that’s simply because you never looked very hard.’

‘Everyone knows me as Dubreuilh’s wife, or as Doctor Anne Dubreuilh. Both inspire nothing but respect.’

‘Well, I for one don’t feel any special respect for you,’ Scriassine said, smiling.

There was a brief silence and then I asked, ‘Why should a woman who’s free to do as she pleases sleep with everyone on earth?’

He looked at me severely. ‘If a man, a man for whom you might have a little liking, asked you straight out to spend the night with him, would you do it?’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On him, on me, on the circumstances.’

‘Let’s suppose that I asked you now. What then?’

‘I don’t know.’

I had seen it coming ever since we broached the subject but, nevertheless I was taken by surprise.

‘I am asking you. Which is it – yes or no?’

‘You’re going a little too fast,’ I said.

‘I hate a lot of beating around the bush. Paying court to a woman is degrading for both oneself and for the woman. I don’t suppose you go for all that sentimental nonsense, either.’

‘No, but I like to think things over before I make a decision.’

‘Think it over then.’

He ordered two more whiskies. No, I had no desire to sleep with him, or with any other man. My body had too long been steeped in a sort of selfish torpor. What perverse turn of mind could have made me want to disturb its repose? Besides, it seemed impossible. It always amazed me that Nadine could give herself so easily to total strangers. Between my solitary flesh and the solitary man seated beside me drinking his whisky, not the slightest bond existed. To think of myself naked in his naked arms was as incongruous as imagining him embracing my old mother.

‘Let’s wait and see how the evening turns out,’ I said.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ he replied. ‘How can you expect us to talk politics or psychology with that question bothering us? You must know already what you’re going to decide. Tell me now.’

His impatience seemed to assure me that, after all, I wasn’t my old mother. Since he desired me, I was forced to believe I was desirable, if only for an hour. Nadine claimed she was as indifferent about getting into bed as sitting down at table. Maybe she had the right idea. She accused me of approaching life with white kid gloves. Was it true? What would happen if for once I took off my gloves? If I didn’t take them off tonight, would I ever? Reason said to me, ‘My life is over.’ But against all reason, I still had a good many years to kill.

‘All right,’ I said abruptly, ‘the answer is yes.’

‘Ah! now there’s a good answer,’ he said in the encouraging voice of a doctor or professor. He wanted to take my hand, but I declined that reward.

‘I’d like a cup of coffee. I’m afraid I’ve had a little too much to drink.’

‘An American woman would ask for another whisky,’ he said with a smile. ‘But you’re right; it’d be a damn shame if either of us were under the weather.’

He ordered two coffees which we drank in embarrassed silence. I had said yes mainly because I had come to feel a certain affection for him, because of the precarious intimacy he had created between us. But now that yes was beginning to chill my affection.

No sooner had we emptied our cups than he said, ‘Let’s go up to my room.’

‘Right away?’

‘Why not? It’s obvious we have nothing more to say to each other.’

I could have wished for more time to get accustomed to my decision; I had hoped our pact would generate, little by little, a feeling of complicity. But as a matter of fact, I really didn’t have anything more to say.

Suitcases were scattered everywhere about the room. There were two brass beds, one of which was covered with clothing and papers, and on a round coffee table stood several empty champagne bottles. He took me in his arms and I felt a hard yet gentle mouth pressing against my lips. Yes, it was possible, it was easy. Something was happening to me, something different. I closed my eyes and stepped into a dream as lifelike as reality itself, a dream from which I felt I would awaken at dawn, carefree and lighthearted. And then I heard his voice: ‘The little girl seems frightened.’ Those words, which hardly had anything to do with me, rudely brought me out of my dream. I pushed myself free.

‘Wait a moment,’ I said.

I went into the bathroom and hastily freshened up, pushing aside all thoughts; it was too late now to think. He joined me in bed before there was time for any questions to arise in me. I clung tightly to him; at that moment he was my only hope.

At last he said commandingly, ‘Open your eyes.’

I raised my eyelids, but they weighed heavily and closed quickly against the light which hurt them. ‘Open your eyes,’ he was saying. ‘It’s just you and I.’ He was right; I didn’t really want to escape, but first I had to grow accustomed to that strange presence. Becoming aware of my flesh, seeing his unfamiliar face, and under his gaze losing myself within myself – it was too much all at once. But since he insisted, I opened my eyes and I looked at him. I looked at him and was halted midway in my inner turmoil, in a region without light and without darkness, where I was neither body nor spirit. He threw off the sheet, and at the same moment it occurred to me that the room was poorly heated and that I no longer had the belly of a young girl. The mutilated flower burst suddenly into bloom, and lost its petals, while he muttered words to himself, for himself, words I tried not to hear. But I … I had lost interest. He came back close to me and for a moment the warmth of his body aroused me again.

‘How could I ever feel any tenderness for this man?’ I thought. There was a discouraging hostility in his eyes, but I didn’t feel guilty towards him, not even by omission.

‘Don’t worry so much about me. Just let me …’

‘You’re not really cold,’ he said angrily. ‘You’re resisting with your head. But I’ll force you …’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No …’

It would have been too difficult to explain my feeling. There was a look of hate in his eyes and I was ashamed to have let myself be taken in by the mirage of carnal pleasure. A man, I discovered, isn’t a Turkish bath.

‘You don’t want to!’ he was saying. ‘You don’t want to! Stubborn mule!’ He struck me lightly on the chin; I was too weary to escape into anger. I began to tremble. A beating fist, thousands of fists … ‘Violence is everywhere,’ I thought. I trembled and tears began running down my cheeks.

Now, he was kissing my eyes, murmuring, ‘I’m drinking your tears,’ and a conquering tenderness appeared in his face, a childlike tenderness, and I had pity as much for him as for myself. Both of us were equally lost, equally disillusioned. I smoothed his hair; I asked, ‘Why do you hate me?’

‘It has to be,’ he said regretfully. ‘It just has to be.’

‘But I don’t hate you, you know. In fact I like being in your arms.’

‘Do you really mean that?’

‘Yes, I do.’

In a sense I did mean it; something was happening. True, it had missed the mark, was sad, ridiculous even, but it was real.

‘It’s been a strange night,’ I said with a smile. ‘I’ve never spent a night like this before.’

‘Never? Not even with younger men? You’re not lying to me, are you?’

The words had lied for me. I endorsed their lie. ‘Never.’

He crushed me ardently against him. ‘All right?’

I knew my pleasure found no echo in his heart, and if I impatiently awaited his it was only to be done with it. And yet I had been subdued, was willing to sigh, to moan. But not very convincingly, I imagine.

He, too, had been subdued, for he didn’t insist. Almost immediately, he fell asleep against me; I also dozed off. The weight of his arm across my chest awakened me.

‘You’re here! Thank God!’ he exclaimed, opening his eyes. ‘I was having a nightmare; I always have nightmares.’ He seemed to be speaking from very far off, from the darkest depths of night. ‘Don’t you have a place where you can hide me?’

‘Hide you?’

‘Yes. It would be so wonderful to just disappear. Can’t we disappear for a few days?’

‘I have no place. And I can’t get away myself.’

‘What a shame!’ he said, and then asked, ‘Don’t you ever have nightmares?’

‘Not very often.’

‘I envy you! I always have someone near me at night.’

‘I have to leave soon, you know,’ I said.

‘Not right away. Don’t go. Don’t leave me!’ He grabbed me by the shoulders. I was a life preserver. But in what shipwreck?

‘I’ll wait till you fall asleep,’ I said. ‘Would you like to meet me again tomorrow?’

‘Yes, certainly. I’ll be at the café next door to your place at noon. Is that all right with you?’

‘Fine. Now try to sleep quietly.’

As soon as his breathing grew heavy, I slipped out of bed. It was hard for me to tear myself from the night which clung so tenaciously to my skin. But I didn’t want to arouse Nadine’s suspicions. Each of us had her own way of duping the other: she told me everything; I told her nothing. As I stood before the mirror, transforming my face into a mask of decency, I realized Nadine had been one of the main reasons for my decision to say yes to Scriassine, and I couldn’t help myself from holding it against her. Yet I really hadn’t the least regret for what I had done. You learn so many things about a man when you’re in bed with him, much more than when you have him maunder for weeks on a couch. Only I was far too vulnerable for this sort of experiment.

I was kept very busy all morning. Sézenac didn’t come, but I had quite a few other patients. I had only a vague impression of Scriassine, and I needed to see him again. Our night together was resting heavily on my heart, incomplete, absurd. I hoped that in talking to him we would be able to bring it to a conclusion, to save it perhaps. I was the first to arrive at the café, a small place, painted bright red, with highly polished tables. I had often bought cigarettes there, but I had never sat down. Couples were sitting in booths and talking quietly. A waiter appeared and I ordered a glass of ersatz port. I felt as if I were in a strange city; I no longer seemed to know what I was waiting for. Suddenly Scriassine burst into the café and walked hurriedly over to my table.

‘Sorry I’m late. I had a dozen appointments this morning.’

‘That makes it all the nicer of you to have come.’

He smiled at me. ‘Sleep well?’

‘Very well.’

He, too, ordered a glass of ersatz port and then leaned towards me. There was no longer any trace of hostility in his face. ‘I’d like to ask you a question.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Why did you agree so readily to go up to my room with me?’

I smiled. ‘I suppose it’s because I like you a little,’ I replied.

‘You weren’t drunk?’

‘Not at all.’

‘And you weren’t sorry afterwards?’

‘No.’

He hesitated. I gathered he was anxious to obtain a detailed commentary for his most intimate catalogue. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to know. You said you’d never spent a night like that before. Is that true?’

‘Yes and no,’ I answered with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, disappointed. ‘It’s never really true.’

‘It’s true at the moment; less so the next day.’

He swallowed the sticky wine in a single gulp.

‘You know what chilled me?’ I said. ‘There were moments when you looked so terribly hostile.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘That couldn’t be helped.’

‘Why? The struggle between the sexes?’

‘We’re not on the same side. I mean, politically.’

For a moment I was stupefied. ‘But politics has so little place in my life!’

‘Indifference is also a stand,’ he said sharply. ‘You see, in politics if you’re not completely with me you’re very far from me.’

‘Then you shouldn’t have asked me to go up to your room,’ I said reproachfully.

A sly smile wrinkled his eyes. ‘If I really want a woman, it’s all the same to me whether she agrees with my politics or not. I wouldn’t even have any qualms about sleeping with a fascist.’

‘But apparently it isn’t all the same to you, since you were hostile.’

He smiled again. ‘In bed, it’s not bad to hate each other a little.’

‘That’s horrible,’ I said, staring at him. ‘You’re quite an introvert, aren’t you? You can pity people and feel remorse for them, but I doubt if you could ever really like anyone.’

‘Ah! so you’re the one who’s doing the analysing today,’ he said. ‘Go on; I love being analysed.’

In his eyes I saw the same look of maniacal greed I had noticed the night before when he looked down at my naked body. I could not have tolerated it except in a child or a sick person.

‘You believe loneliness can be cured by force; but in making love, there’s no greater blunder.’

He got the point. ‘What you’re saying is that last night was a failure. Is that right?’

‘More or less.’

‘Would you be willing to begin all over again?’

I hesitated. ‘Yes. I don’t like to stop at a failure.’

His face hardened. ‘That’s a pretty poor reason,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘You don’t make love with your head.’

That was precisely my opinion. If his words and desires had wounded me, it was because they came from his head. ‘I think both of us do things too much with our heads,’ I said.

‘In that case, I suppose it’d be better if we didn’t try again,’ he said.

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

Yes, a second failure would have been even more disastrous than the first, and a happy outcome was inconceivable. We had absolutely no love at all for each other. Even talk was useless; there had been nothing worth saving and the whole affair, in any case, didn’t lend itself to a conclusion. We politely exchanged a few idle words and then I went home.

I hold nothing against him, and I hold hardly anything against myself. Besides, as Robert told me immediately, the whole thing was quite unimportant – nothing but a distasteful remembrance lingering in our minds and concerning no one but ourselves. But when I went up to my room, I promised myself I would never again attempt to remove my kid gloves. ‘It’s too late,’ I murmured, looking into the mirror. ‘My gloves are grafted to my flesh now; they’d have to skin me alive to get them off.’ No, it wasn’t only Scriassine’s fault that things turned out the way they did; it was my fault too. I had slept with him out of curiosity, out of defiance, out of weariness, to prove to myself God only knows what. Well, whatever it was, I certainly proved the contrary. I thought casually that my life might have been different. I might have dressed more elegantly, gone out more often, known the little pleasures of vanity or the burning fevers of the senses. But it was too late. And then all at once I understood why my past sometimes seemed to me to be someone else’s. Because now I am someone else, a woman of thirty-nine, a woman who’s aware of her age!

‘Thirty-nine years!’ I said aloud. Before the war I was too young for the years to have weighed upon me. And then for five years, I forgot myself completely. And now I’ve found myself again, only to learn that I’m condemned. Old age is awaiting me; there’s no escaping it. Even now I can see its beginnings in the depths of the mirror. Oh, I’m still a woman, I still bleed every month. Nothing’s really changed, except that now I know. I ran my fingers through my hair. Those white streaks are no longer a curiosity, a sign; they’re the beginning. In a few years, my head will be the colour of my bones. My face still seems smooth and firm, but overnight the mask will melt, laying bare the rheumy eyes of an old woman. Each year the seasons repeat themselves; wounds are healed. But there’s no way in the world to halt the infirmities of age. ‘There isn’t even any time left to worry about it,’ I thought, turning away from my reflection. ‘It’s even too late for regrets. There’s nothing left to do but to keep going.’