Читать книгу The Mandarins - Simone Beauvoir de - Страница 9

The next morning the radio confirmed the German collapse. ‘It’s really the beginning of peace,’ Henri repeated to himself, sitting down at his desk. ‘At last I can start writing again!’ He would, he assured himself, write every day from now on. But what exactly would he write? He didn’t know and he was perfectly content not to know; always before he had known only too well. Now he would attempt to talk to the reader without premeditation, as one writes to a friend. And perhaps he would at last succeed in saying all those things for which he had never found room enough in his too carefully constructed books. There are so many things one would like to preserve with words but which are forever lost. He raised his head and looked through the window at the cold sky. What a pity to think that this winter morning would be lost; everything seemed so precious: the white, virginal paper, the smell of alcohol and stale cigarette ends, the Arab music drifting up from the café next door. Notre Dame was as cold as the sky, a tramp with a huge collar of bluish chicken feathers was dancing in the middle of the street, and two girls in their Sunday clothes were watching him and laughing. It was Christmas, it was the German collapse, and life was beginning again. Yes, all those mornings, all those evenings, that he had let slip through his fingers in the last four years, he was determined to make up for them during the next thirty. You can’t say everything, that’s true enough. But nevertheless you can try to get across the real flavour of your life. Every life has a flavour, a flavour all its own, and if you can’t describe it, there’s no point in writing. ‘I’ve got to tell about what I liked, what I like, what I am,’ he said to himself as he finished sketching a cluster of flowers on a scrap of paper. Who was he? What manner of man would he discover after that long absence? It’s difficult, working from within, for a person to define himself, to set limits on himself. He wasn’t a political fanatic, nor a literary aesthete, nor a dedicated man in any sense. Rather, he felt quite ordinary, and the feeling didn’t upset him in the least. A man like everyone else, who spoke sincerely of himself, would speak in the name of everyone, for everyone. Complete sincerity: that was the only distinctive thing he felt he had to aim for, the only restriction he would have to impose upon himself. He added another flower to the cluster. But it isn’t easy to be sincere. First of all, he had no intention of making an open confession. And secondly, whosoever says novel, says lie. Well, he would think about that later. For the moment, he had above all else to keep himself from becoming burdened with too many problems. Say anything, begin anywhere – beneath the moon in the gardens of El Oued. The paper was bare; he had to take advantage of it.

‘Did you start your light novel?’ Paula asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know? Don’t you know what you’re writing?’

‘I’m planning to surprise myself,’ he said with a laugh.

Paula shrugged her shoulders. As a matter of fact, what he said was quite true; he really didn’t want to know. Without any semblance of order, any basic plan, he jotted down odds and ends of his life, and it amused and pleased him, and he could ask for nothing more.

The evening he went to meet Nadine, he left his writing regretfully. He had told Paula he was going out with Scriassine; during the last year he had learned to be more discreet. To have said ‘I’m going out with Nadine’ would have brought on so many questions, so many misinterpretations, that he chose not to say it. But it was really absurd to hide the fact that he was meeting that awkward girl whom he had always looked upon as a sort of niece. It was even more absurd to have made the appointment in the first place. He pushed open the door to the Bar Rouge and walked over to her table. She was sitting between Lachaume and Vincent.

‘No fights tonight?’

‘No,’ Vincent said peevishly.

Young men and women crowded into that red cellar not primarily to be among friends, but rather to confront adversaries. Every conceivable shade of political opinion was represented there, and Henri often came there to spend a few pleasant moments talking with his friends. He would have liked to sit down now and chat casually with Lachaume and Vincent while he watched the crowd in the room. But Nadine got up at once.

‘Are you taking me to dinner?’

‘That’s what I’m here for.’

Outside, it was dark; the sidewalk was covered with dirty slush. What in the world, he wondered, would he be able to do with Nadine?

‘Where would you like to go?’ he asked. ‘To the Italian place?’

‘To the Italian place.’

She wasn’t difficult to please. She let him choose the table and ordered the same things as he – peperoni and osso bucco. She approved of everything he said with a delighted air which somehow seemed rather suspect to Henri. The truth was that she wasn’t listening to him; she was eating greedily and quietly, smiling into her plate. He let the conversation lapse and Nadine appeared not to notice it. Having swallowed the last mouthful, she wiped her lips with a broad gesture.

‘And now where do you plan to take me?’

‘You don’t like jazz and you don’t like dancing?’

‘No.’

‘Well, we can try the Tropic of Cancer.’

‘Can we have any fun there?’

‘Why? Do you know some place we can have some fun? The Tropic isn’t a bad place for a quiet talk.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Public benches are all right, too, for talking.’ Her face lit up. ‘As a matter of fart, there are some places I do like – the ones where you see those naked women.’

‘Really? That sort of thing amuses you?’

‘Oh, yes. Of course, the Turkish baths are better, but the cabarets aren’t bad.’

‘You wouldn’t by any chance be just a little bit perverted, would you?’ Henri asked, laughing.

‘It’s possible,’ she said dryly. ‘Have you anything better to suggest?’

It was impossible to imagine anything more incongruous than going to see naked women with this tall, awkward girl who was neither a virgin nor yet a woman. But Henri had taken it upon himself to entertain her and he had no idea of how to go about it. They went to Chez Astarte and sat down at a table in front of a champagne bucket. The room was still empty; at the bar, the house girls were chattering to each other. Nadine studied them carefully.

‘If I were a man,’ she said, ‘I’d take a different woman home with me every night.’

‘If you had a different woman every night, they’d all seem the same after a while.’

‘You’re wrong. Take that little brunette over there, and the redhead with those pretty falsies, for example. You wouldn’t find the same thing at all under their dresses.’ She rested her chin in the palm of her hand and looked steadily at Henri. ‘Aren’t you interested in women?’

‘Not in that way.’

‘How then?’

‘Well, I like looking at them when they’re pretty, dancing with them when they’re grateful, or talking to them when they’re intelligent.’

‘For talk men are better,’ Nadine said. She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘why did you ask me to go out with you? I’m not pretty, I dance badly, and I’m a poor conversationalist.’

Henri smiled. ‘Don’t you remember? You were reproaching me for not asking you?’

‘And I suppose every time someone reproaches you for not doing something, you immediately do it?’

‘All right,’ Henri asked, ‘why did you accept my invitation?’

She gave him such a naïve and inviting look that he was suddenly upset. Was it true, as Paula claimed, that she couldn’t see a man without offering herself to him?

‘One must never refuse anything,’ she said sententiously.

For a moment she silently stirred her champagne. Then they started to talk idly again. But from time to time Nadine would abruptly stop talking to stare insistently at Henri, a look of astonished reproof on her face. ‘One thing is sure,’ he told himself. ‘I can’t very well make a pass at her.’ She only half-appealed to him; he knew her too well; she was too easy; and besides, it would have embarrassed him because of the Dubreuilhs. He tried to fill the silences, but twice she yawned deliberately in his face. He, too, found that time passed slowly. A few couples were dancing, mostly Americans and their girls, and one or two pairs of lovers from the provinces. He decided to leave as soon as the dancers had done their number and he felt relieved when they finally came on. There were six of them, in sequin-studded panties and brassieres, wearing top hats on which the French tricolour or the American stars and stripes were painted. They danced neither well nor badly, they were homely but not excessively so. It was an uninteresting show, a show that never got off the ground. What was it then that made Nadine look so delighted? When the girls took off their brassieres, uncovering their wax-firmed breasts, she cast a sly glance at Henri and asked, ‘Which one do you like best?’

‘They’re all the same.’

Nadine silently examined the women with an expert, rather blase look. After they had backed out of the room, waving their panties in one hand and holding their red-white-and-blue hats over their genitals with the other, Nadine asked, ‘Do you think it’s more important to have a pretty face or a good figure?’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On the woman, on your taste.’

‘Well, how do you rate me?’

‘I’ll tell you in three or four years,’ he said, looking her over carefully. ‘You’re still unfinished.’

‘You’re never finished until you’re dead,’ she said angrily. Her eyes wandered around the room and came to rest on the blonde dancer, who was now wearing a tight black dress and sitting at the bar. ‘You know, she really does look sad. Why don’t you ask her to dance?’

‘That certainly won’t cheer her up much.’

‘All her friends have men. She looks like a leftover. Ask her; what can it cost you?’ she said with a sudden burst of vehemence. Then her voice softened, and pleadingly she added, ‘Just once.’

‘If it means that much to you,’ he said.

The blonde followed him unenthusiastically on to the dance floor. She was a silly, ordinary-looking thing; he couldn’t see why Nadine took such an interest in her. To tell the truth, Nadine’s whims were beginning to get on his nerves. When he returned to the table, he noticed she had filled two champagne glasses and was looking at them meditatively.

‘You’re nice,’ she said, looking at him tenderly. Suddenly she smiled and asked, ‘Do you get funny when you’re drunk?’

‘When I’m drunk I always think I’m very funny.’

‘And other people, what do they think?’

‘When I’m drunk, I don’t worry very much about what other people think.’

She pointed to the bottle. ‘Let’s see you get drunk.’

‘Champagne isn’t what’ll do it.’

‘How many glasses can you drink without getting drunk?’

‘Quite a few.’

‘More than three?’

‘Of course.’

She looked at him doubtfully. ‘That’s something I’d like to see! Do you mean to say you could gulp these two glasses down and it wouldn’t do anything to you?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘Let’s see you try.’

‘Why?’

‘People are always bragging; sometimes you have to call their bluff.’

‘After that, I suppose you’ll ask me to stand on my head,’ Henri said.

‘After that, you can go home and go to bed. Drink up; one after the other.’

He swallowed the contents of one of the glasses and felt a sudden shock in the pit of his stomach.

‘Now the second,’ Nadine said, handing him the other glass.

He drank it down.

He woke up stretched out on a bed, naked, alongside a naked woman who was holding him by the hair and shaking his head.

‘Who are you?’ he mumbled.

‘Nadine. Wake up, it’s late.’

He opened his eyes; the lights were on. He was in a strange room, a hotel room. Yes, he remembered the desk clerk, the stairway. Before that, he had been drinking champagne. His head ached.

‘What happened? I don’t understand.’

‘That champagne you drank was spiked with brandy,’ Nadine replied, laughing.

‘You spiked my champagne with brandy?’

‘I did. It’s a little trick I often play on the Americans when I have to get them drunk. Anyhow,’ she said, still smiling, ‘it was the only way to have you.’

He carefully touched his head. ‘I don’t remember a thing.’

‘Oh, there was nothing much to it.’

She got out of bed, took a comb from her purse, and, standing nude before a full-length mirror, began combing her hair. How youthful her body was! Had he really held that lithe, slender form, with its softly rounded shoulders and small breasts, against him? Suddenly she realized that he was studying her. ‘Don’t look at me like that!’ she said. She grabbed her slip and hastily put it on.

‘You’re very pretty!’

‘Don’t be silly!’ she said haughtily.

‘Why are you getting dressed? Come over here.’

She shook her head and Henri, suddenly worried, asked, ‘Did I do something I shouldn’t have? I was drunk, you know.’

She walked over to the bed and kissed him on the cheek. ‘You were very nice,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t like starting all over again,’ she added, walking away. ‘Not the same day, anyhow.’

It was annoying not being able to remember anything. He watched her putting on her socks and suddenly he felt uneasy, lying there naked between the sheets. ‘I’m getting up. Turn round.’

‘You want me to turn round?’

‘Please.’

She stood in a corner, her nose to the wall and her hands behind her back, like a schoolgirl being punished. In a moment, she asked mockingly, ‘Time enough?’

‘Ready,’ he answered, buckling his belt.

Nadine looked at him critically. ‘You are complicated!’

‘Me?’

‘You make quite a fuss about getting into bed and about getting out of it.’

‘What a head you’ve given me!’ Henri said.

They left the hotel, walked towards the Gare Montparnasse, and went into a little café which was just opening up for the morning. They sat down at a table and ordered two ersatz coffees.

‘I’d like to know why you were so set on sleeping with me,’ he said lightly.

‘I wanted to get to know you.’

‘Is that always the way you get to know people?’

‘When you sleep with someone, it breaks the ice. It’s better being together now, isn’t it?’

‘The ice is certainly broken,’ Henri said, laughing. ‘But why is it so important for you to know me?’

‘I want you to like me.’

‘But I do like you.’

She gave him a look that was both malicious and embarrassed. ‘I want you to like me enough to take me to Portugal with you.’

‘Oh, so that’s it!’ He put his hand on her arm. ‘I’ve already told you it’s impossible.’

‘Because of Paula? But since she’s not going with you anyhow, there’s no reason why I can’t.’

‘No, you just can’t. It would make her very unhappy.’

‘Don’t tell her.’

‘That would be too big a lie.’ He smiled and added, ‘Besides she’d know about it anyhow.’

‘So just to spare her a little pain, you’d deprive me of something I want more than anything in the world.’

‘Do you really want to go that much?’

‘A country where there’s sun and plenty to eat? I’d sell my soul to go.’

‘You were hungry during the war?’

‘Hungry? And bear in mind that when it came to scrounging for food, no one could beat Mother. She’d ride her bike fifty miles out into the country just to bring us back a couple of pounds of mushrooms or a chunk of meat. But that still didn’t keep us from being hungry. I literally went mad over the first American who plunked his rations in my arms.’

‘Is that what made you like Americans so much?’

‘That, and at first they used to amuse me.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Now, they’re too well organized; it’s not fun any more. Paris has become sinister again.’ She gave Henri an imploring look. ‘Take me with you.’

He would have enjoyed giving her that pleasure; nothing could be more gratifying than to make someone truly happy. But how could he ever convince Paula to accept a thing like that?

‘You’ve had affairs before,’ Nadine said, ‘and Paula put up with them.’

‘Who told you that?’

Nadine smiled slyly. ‘When a woman talks about her love affairs to another woman, it gets about pretty fast.’

Yes, Henri had admitted to a few infidelities, for which Paula had magnanimously forgiven him. But the difficulty now was that an explanation would inexorably lead him either to an entanglement of lies – and he wanted no more lies – or to abruptly demanding his freedom. And he had no stomach for that.

‘But going away together for a whole month,’ he murmured, ‘is something else again.’

‘But we’ll leave each other as soon as we get back. I don’t want to take you away from Paula,’ Nadine said with an insolent laugh. ‘All I want to do is get away from here for a while.’

Henri hesitated. To wander through strange streets and sit in outdoor cafés with a woman who laughed in your face, to find her warm, young body in a hotel room at night, yes, it was tempting. And since he had already decided to break off with Paula, what did he gain by waiting? Time would never patch things up; just the opposite.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I can’t promise you anything. Just remember, this isn’t a promise. But I’m going to try talking to Paula, and if it seems possible to take you, well … I will.’