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'Is the letter the only thing you've got against me?' he asked. 'Or did your Communist pals convince you that I'm a social traitor?'
'I don't have any Communist pals,' Nadine replied. She looked at Henri icily. 'Social traitor or not, you're no longer what you once were.'
'That's completely idiotic,' Henri said irritably, 'I'm exactly the same as ever.'
'No.'
'In what way have I changed? Since when? What have you got against me? Explain yourself.'
'First of all, you're hanging around with that filthy crowd,' Nadine said. Suddenly, her voice rose. 'I thought that you, at least, wanted people to remember. You say some very fine things in your play - that we mustn't forget, and all that. And actually you're just like the others!'
she's not wrong
Henri shrugged his shoulders. 'Brieux will film the play I wrote or nothing at all.'
'You aren't going to spit on two million just because they want you to bring a dead man back to life!'
'He pretends to scorn money,' Claudie said, 'But what with the price of butter nowadays, it certainly comes in handy. Even when the Fritzes were here, it cost less.'
'Don't talk like that in front of a resistentialist,' Lucie said.
This time they all laughed together, and Henri smiled with them. If they could have heard them, seen him, they would all have blamed him together- Lambert as well as Vincent, Volange as much as Lachaume, and Paula, Anne, Dubreuilh and Samazelle, and even Luc, and that whole anonymous throng of those who were expecting something of him. That was precisely why he was there, with those people - because he shouldn't have been. He was wrong, radically wrong, without reservations, without excuses. What a relief! Sooner or later, you get fed up with constantly asking yourself, 'Am I right or wrong?' That one evening at least, he knew the answer, 'I'm wrong, completely wrong.' He had made a clean break with Dubreuilh, the SRL had disavowed him, and most of his old comrades felt a shiver of shame when they thought of him. At L'Enclume, Lachaume and his friends - and how many others throughout Paris, throughout France - were calling him a traitor. In the wings of Studio 46, machine guns were rattling, the Germans were burning a French village, and anger and horror were reawakening in sluggish hearts. Everywhere, hate was flaring. Yes, that was his reward: hate. And there was no way of overcoming it. Drink. He understood Scriassine; he refilled his glass again.
oh god
Nevertheless, the evening he found himself seated between Lucie Belhomme and Claudie de Belzunce in front of a bottle of too-sweet champagne, Henri suddenly thought in astonishment, 'What am I doing here?' He liked neither the champagne, nor the crystal chandeliers, the mirrors, the velvet covering of the chairs, nor those women who so abundantly displayed their tired skin. He liked neither Lucie, nor Dudule, nor Claudie, nor Vernon, nor the ageing young actor who was said to be his lover.
'That was a courageous thing you did,' Lucie said.
'What?'
'Denouncing all those horrors.'
'If that takes courage, then there are thousands of heroes in France,' Henri said. 'When you attack the Soviet Union nowadays, you don't run any risk of being shot.'
She examined Henri, looking slightly perplexed. 'Yes, but you more or less established a position for yourself on the left. That affair must have compromised it.'
'But think of the positions I can now find on the right!'
'Right, left, those are outmoded notions,' Dudule said. 'What people have to be made to understand is that the collaboration of capital and labour is necessary for the country's recovery. You did a useful piece of work in disposing of one of the myths opposed to their reconciliation.'
the darkness of this joke oh boy
Josette was sitting next to Henri behind two champagne glasses; she was wearing a very low-cut dress, and they were both laughing. 'Exactly the way we are now,' he thought, annoyed. 'And from this it's only a short step to imagining that I spend my nights swilling champagne, that I've sold out to America. They won't waste much time taking that step.' And yet, he had no real liking for all that inane glitter. He frequented the fashionable places to make Josette happy, but for him it didn't count; those moments remained marginal to his real life. He continued staring at the picture. 'But the fact of the matter is that it's I, and that I'm here.'
'Are you angry?' Josette asked. 'You promised not to get angry.'
'No, I'm not the least bit angry,' he replied. And then he thought decisively, 'Let them all go to hell!' He owed no one anything, and yet he was blaming himself for everything. Was that what real freedom meant?
Living a love while refusing it is a very strange business. Lewis's letters broke my heart. 'Will I go on loving you more and more each day?' he wrote. And another time, 'You played a funny trick on me. I can't casually bring women home with me any more. And I no longer have anything to offer those to whom I might have given a little corner of my heart.' How I wanted to throw myself into his arms when I read those words! Since it was forbidden me, I should have told him, 'Forget me.' But I didn't want to say it. I wanted him to love me, wanted him to suffer all the pain I was causing him. I suffered his sadness in remorse. But I suffered, too, on my own account: how slowly time passed, how quickly it passed! Lewis remained as far from me as ever, but each day brought me closer to old age. Our love was ageing; it would die one day without ever having lived. The thought was intolerable. I was happy to leave St Martin and return to Paris, where once again I found my patients, my friends, noise, pursuits that kept me from thinking of myself.
She stuck a black beret on her head and slipped on a pair of gloves. 'Honestly, how do you think I look?'
It was no longer from inside myself, but from her face, that I took my answer. 'You are perfect!' I replied with conviction.
oh god
Henri certainly had nursed real resentments against Robert, but he'd had them for a long time. Why should he want to break now? .
Robert stared off into space, his face hard. 'I embarrass him, you understand.'
'No, I don't understand,' I replied.
'He's going downhill fast,' Robert said. 'You've seen the kind of people he goes around with? We're his bad conscience; all he wants is to be rid of it.'
'You're being unfair!' I said. 'I, too, was disgusted the other night, but you yourself explained to me that having a play produced nowadays necessarily entails certain compromises. And'with Henri, it doesn't involve very much. He hardly ever sees those people. Yes, he's sleeping with Josette, but you certainly can be sure that it's not she who's influencing him.'
'Granted that, in itself, that party was of no importance,' Robert said. 'But it's a sign. Henri is the kind who pampers himself, and he wants to be able to pamper himself in peace and quiet, without having to account to anyone.'
A half-hour later, she rang the bell, and I led her into my bedroom. Her hair was hidden under a dark kerchief, and the powder she had spread over her face failed to camouflage her swollen nose. Her breath had a strong odour of mint and cheap wine. Paula had been so beautiful that it never occurred to me she could one day cease completely to be so - there was something in her face that would resist everything. And suddenly, you could see; like everyone else's, it was made of spongy flesh - more than eighty per cent water. She pulled off her kerchief and sank down on the couch.
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'Why do I write?' Robert said. 'Because man doesn't live by bread alone and because I believe in the need for that added element. I write in order to capture all the things action ignores - the truths of the moment, the individual, the immediate. Up to now, I thought that that task went hand in hand with the revolution. But no; it hinders it. At the moment all literature that aspires to give man something besides bread is exploited to prove that he can very well do without bread.'
'You've always avoided that misunderstanding,' I said.
'But things have changed,' Robert said. 'You see, today the revolution is in the hands of the Communists and of them alone. There is no longer any place for the values we used to defend. Maybe one day we'll find them again; let us hope so. But if we stubbornly insist on maintaining them now, we serve the cause of the counter-revolution.'
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