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He got up late and had just finished dressing when a messenger brought him a special delivery. His heart leaped when he recognised Dubreuilh's handwriting. 'I just read your farewell letter to L'Espoir. It's really absurd that our attitude accentuates only our differences when so many things draw us together. As for me, I'm still your friend.' There was a postscript. 'I'd like to speak to you as soon as possible regarding someone who seems to wish you ill.' Henri stared at those blue-black lines for a long time. He had thought of writing to him - and it was Dubreuilh who had written. You could impute his generosity to pride, but that was because pride with him was a generous virtue. I’ll go see him straight away,' Henri said to himself and he felt as if an army of red ants had been let loose inside his breast. What had Sezenac said? If he had raised suspicions in Dubreuilh, how would he be able to lie with enough conviction to still them? Since Dubreuilh was offering him his friendship, it was, no doubt, still not too late for lying. But how abominable it would be to reply to such an offer with an abuse of confidence! And yet, what else was there to do? Even Dubreuilh would be shocked by an admission, and then Henri would feel at fault. He got into his car. Now, for the first time, harbouring a secret weighed heavily upon him. It requires you either to deceive someone else or betray yourself; friendship becomes almost impossible. He hesitated for a long time in front of Dubreuilh's door before he could make up his mind to ring.
:(
'You've become damned fatalistic!' he said.
'No, I don't say that action in general is impossible. It is just now, for us.'
'I read your book,' Henri said. 'All in all, you think it's possible to do something only by going along unconditionally with the Communists.'
'Yes. It isn't that their position is striking, but the fact is that, besides them, there's nothing.'
'And yet you're not going along with them.'
'I can't remake myself,' Dubreuilh said. 'Their revolution is too unlike the one I used to hope for. I was wrong; unfortunately, you can't suddenly become someone else simply by realizing your errors. You're young; you still might be capable of making the leap. Not I.'
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'Oh, you can't deny yourself everything,' Dubreuilh said with a kind of impatience. 'Ascetism is all right if it's spontaneous, but for that you've got to have positive satisfactions elsewhere. And in the world of today, there aren't many. Let me tell you something. If you hadn't slept with Josette, you would have had regrets about it, regrets which would have led you to some other foolishness.'
'That's quite possible,' Henri said.
'You can't draw a straight line in a curved space,' Dubreuilh said. 'You can't lead a proper life in a society which isn't proper. Whichever way you turn, you're always caught. Still another illusion that has to be got rid of,' he concluded. 'No personal salvation possible.'
Henri looked at Dubreuilh uncertainly. 'Then what's left to us?'
'Not very much, I'm afraid,' Dubreuilh replied.
There was a silence. Henri didn't feel satisfied with that generalized indulgence. 'What I'd like to know is what you would have done in my place,' he said.
'I can't tell you, because I wasn't in your place,' Dubreuilh replied. 'You'd have to tell me everything in detail,' he added.
'I'll tell you everything,' Henri said.
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I looked out at the lawns, the lakes, the swans. One day, soon no doubt, I would once again like Paris, would have my troubles, pleasures, preferences; my life would emerge from the fog, my real life, my Old-World life, and I would be taken up with it completely. Suddenly, I began to speak, for I had to confirm the reality of that other world as well, that world from which I was separated by an ocean, by a single night. I talked about my last week there. But it was even worse than remaining silent; as in the previous years, I felt guilty, horribly guilty. Robert understood everything - only too well. There, Lewis was awakening in a room destroyed by my absence; he was silent, he no longer had anyone. He was alone, and in his bed, in his arms, my place was empty. Nothing would ever make up for the desolation of that morning; the pain I was inflicting on him couldn't be expiated.
Before going to bed, I had a long talk with Nadine. She was going out with Henri again and she was very pleased about it. She bombarded me with questions. The next day, I telephoned Paula to let her know I was coming; her voice was crisp and calm. It was about ten o'clock when I turned into that street which had seemed so tragic to me the past winter, and I was upset by its reassuring look. The windows were open to the mildness of the evening, people were calling to each other from house to house, a little girl was skipping with a rope. Under the sign 'Furnished Rooms To Let' I rang Paula's bell, and the door opened, normally. Too normally. Of what use were all those frenzies, those distortions, if everything had returned to its place, if reason and routine had triumphed? Of what use was my impassioned remorse if it was ordained that I would one day awake in indifference? I was almost hoping to see a hostile and haggard Paula appear in the doorway of her apartment.
'Have you seen him again?' I asked.
'Oh, no! And I won't see him again,' she said spiritedly. 'He took unfair advantage of the situation.'
I kept silent. I was quite familiar with the kind of explanations Mardrus had used; on occasion, I myself made use of similar ones, and I valued them for what they were worth. Yes, to release Paula it was necessary to reach back into the past in order to destroy her love. But I thought of those microbes which can't be exterminated except by destroying the organism they are devouring; Henri was dead for Paula, but she, too, was dead. I didn't know that fat woman with the sweaty face and the bovine eyes who was swilling Scotch beside me.
I laughed. 'But why do you want me to leave Robert?'
The waiter placed two more Scotches in front of us; Paula gulped half of hers down immediately.
'There's nothing more injurious than living in the shadow of someone else's glory,' she said. 'One wastes away. You, too, have got to find yourself. Drink up,' she said abruptly, pointing to my glass.
maybe not wrong
Tears streaked down her perspiring face; she ignored them. Perhaps she had shed so many that her skin had become insensitive to them. I felt like weeping with her over that love which for ten years had been the meaning and the pride of her life and which had now become a shameful sore. I took a sip of the Scotch and squeezed the glass in my hand, as if it were a talisman. 'I'd rather die of suffering,' I said to myself, 'than ever sneeringly scatter the ashes of my past to the winds.'
fair
Yes, my life with Lewis would have been quite cramped. A foreigner, an outsider, I would have been able neither to make a life for myself nor to blend into the life of that huge country which would never be mine. I would have been only a woman in love clinging to the man she loved. I didn't feel myself capable of living solely for love. But how weary I was of taking up each morning the empty, ponderous weight of yet another day in which I was needed by no one! Robert hadn't answered me by saying that he needed me. Never had he said that to me. Only, previously the question never arose; my life was neither necessary nor gratuitous; it was simply my life. But now, Lewis had questioned me: 'Why not stay with me, always? Why not?' And I, who had promised never to disappoint him, had answered, 'No.' That no had to be justified — and I could find no justification. His voice pursued me: 'Why not? Why not?' Suddenly, I thought, 'But nothing is irreparable!' Lewis was still alive, and so was I; we could always speak across the ocean. He had promised to write me first, in a week. If he still called to me in his letter, if his expressions of regret had the sound of a call, I would find the strength to give up my old security; I would answer, 'Yes, I'll come, I'll come to stay with you as long as you want to keep me.'
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I left the post office, stood on the pavement, my arms hung limp at my sides. What dreadful legerdemain! I was no longer sure of the ground under my feet, nor of the calendar, nor even of my own name. Lewis had written and letters were arriving; therefore, his letter had to be here. It was not here. It was too soon to cable, 'No letter. Worried'; too soon to burst into tears; it was, after all, merely a normal delay; I wasn't permitted the refuge of unbounded despair; I had figured wrong, that's all, and one rarely dies from a mistake in calculation. And yet, while I dined with Robert on a flowery terrace overhanging the sea, I was certainly not alive. He spoke to me of Nadine who was going out assiduously with Henri; I answered; we drank our wine, on the label a moustachioed gentleman smiled at us; the lights of the fishing boats shimmered on the sea; all around us hung a powerful fragrance of romantic plants; nothing was missing, anywhere, except black marks on a yellow sheet of paper, and they would have been the symbol of an absence; the absence of an absence, which is really nothing, which devours everything.
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