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[...] Why were they forcing him to get involved in something that was happening in Tananarive? Horrible things are constantly happening on earth; but a person doesn't live all over the world, and dwelling endlessly on distant misfortunes, which you can't do anything about, is nothing but a form of morbid self-indulgence. 'This is where I live, and here there is peace,' he thought. He looked at Nadine. She was quietly relaxed in a way that was quite unusual for her. She, who had so much trouble concentrating on a book, could listen for hours to music she liked, and at those times one could feel a stillness in her that was close to happiness. 'I've got to make her happy,' Henri said to himself. 'There must be a way of breaking that vicious circle.' Making someone happy: that was concrete, that was solid, and if you really put your heart in it, it could keep you pretty well absorbed. Looking after Nadine, raising Maria, writing his books - it wasn't quite the life he had once hoped for. There was a time when he believed that happiness was one way of mastering the world, while actually it was closer to being a way of protecting yourself against it. Nevertheless, it was good to hear that music, to look at the house, at the linden tree, at his manuscript there on the table, saying to himself as he did so, 'I am happy.'
'Maybe,' Dubreuilh said. He smiled. 'I don't know how to explain it to you. After the meeting, we went to a bistro to have some sauerkraut and sausages and drink some beer. There was nothing unusual about the place; I barely knew the men who were with me, and we talked very little. But we had done something together, something with which we were satisfied. It was a good feeling.'
<3
All the next day, Henri kept thinking about the conversation he had had with Dubreuilh, a conversation that had continued late into the night. The only question, Dubreuilh declared, was to choose, among existing things, those you preferred. It wasn't a question of resignation; you resign yourself when, between two real things, you accept the one which is worth less. But there was nothing above humanity, even such as it was. Yes, on certain levels, Henri agreed. Preferring emptiness to fullness was what he had blamed Paula for; she had clung steadfastly to old myths instead of taking him as he was. Conversely, he had never sought 'the ideal woman' in Nadine; he had chosen to live with her in spite of knowing her faults. It was especially when you thought of books and works of art that Dubreuilh's attitude seemed justified. The books you want to write are never written, and you can amuse yourself by seeing a defeat in every masterpiece. And yet, we don't dream of a superterrestrial art; the works we prefer command our absolute love. On the political level, however, Henri felt less convinced — because evil intervenes there. And it isn't always just a lesser good; it can be the absolutes of misery, of death. But then again, if you attach importance to misery, to death, to individual men, it isn't enough to say to yourself, 'Anyhow, it's a sad business,' to feel authorized to wash your hands of it. It is essential that it be more or less sad. Evening was falling and Henri was musing under the linden tree when Anne appeared in the doorway.
<3
He leaned his elbows on the window sill. In the distance, he could see the dark mass of a hill and, close up, the cottage in which Sezenac was lying. He recalled another night, a joyous Christmas Eve, when Sezenac was sprawled out on a rug in Paula's apartment. They had been laughing happily together, congratulating each other on the victory, shouting, 'Long live America!' with Preston and drinking to the Soviet Union. And Sezenac was a traitor, helpful America was preparing to subjugate Europe, and as for what was going on in Russia it was better not to look too closely. Emptied of the promises it had never held, the past was now nothing but a booby trap. The headlights of a car dug a wide, bright trench in the side of the black hill. For a long time, Henri remained motionless, watching those beams of light winding their way through the night. Sezenac was sleeping, and his crimes with him. Nadine was wandering about the countryside; he had no desire to have it out with her. He went to bed without waiting for her to return.
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'With you it will never be the way it was with Diego,' Nadine said firmly. •
'No two loves are alike,' Henri said. 'But why make comparisons? Obviously, if you seek something in our relationship other than what it is, you won't find it.'
‘I’ll never forget Diego,' Nadine said.
'Don't forget him. But don't use your memories against me. That's what you're doing,' he added. 'For a lot of reasons, you've got a grudge against your present life. So you take refuge in the past; and in the name of the past, you assume a superior attitude over everything that happens to you.'
Nadine looked up at him hesitantly. 'Yes, I do cling to my past,' she said.
'And I can well understand that,' Henri said. 'But there's one thing you've got to recognize: it isn't because you have very vivid memories that you're always approaching life with a chip on your shoulder. It's the reverse: you call upon those memories to justify your temperament.'
She began going through the press clippings, and Henri opened a letter, a very amiable letter from a young man. There were a lot of amiable letters, and usually they pleased him. But that night, without quite knowing why, it irritated him to think that in the eyes of certain people he passed for a splendid specimen of humanity. The clock struck ten. Dubreuilh was speaking out against war, but Henri suddenly wished he were in his place. He had often said to himself, 'War is like death: there's no use preparing for it.' But when an aeroplane starts into a nose-dive, it's better to be the pilot who's trying to pull out of it than a terrorized passenger. Doing something, even though it were only speaking, was better than sitting by himself in a corner with that dark weight on his heart. Henri pictured the hall filled with people, their faces upturned towards Dubreuilh, Dubreuilh bent towards them, throwing out words. There was no room in them for fear, for anguish; together, they were hoping. After it was over, Dubreuilh would go to a bistro, a very ordinary bistro, and eat sausages and drink wine. No one would have very much to say, but they would feel good. Henri lit a cigarette. You don't prevent a war with words. But speaking was not necessarily a way of changing history; it was also a certain way of living it. In the silence of that study, given over to his innermost nightmares, Henri felt he was living it poorly.
Henri didn't answer. Happy. The fact was the word no longer had any meaning. You can never possess the world, and protecting yourself against it is out of the question, too. You're in it, that's all. In Porto Venere, as in Paris, the whole earth would be present around him, with its miseries, its crimes, its injustices. He could spend the rest of his life fleeing and he would never find a refuge. He would read the papers, he would listen to the radio, he would receive letters. All he could gain would be that he could say to himself, 'There's nothing I can do.' Suddenly, something exploded inside his chest. No. The solitude that was suffocating him that evening, that mute impotence, that wasn't what he wanted. No. He would never consent to say to himself for the rest of his life, 'Everything is happening without me.' Nadine had seen through him: not for a moment had he really chosen that exile. He suddenly realized that for days he had been suffering the thought with dread.
<3!!!
It's been going on like this for two weeks now, since the moment I arrived in Paris. Robert was waiting for me at the Gare des Invalides. He didn't see me right away. He was pacing the sidewalk with the little steps of an old man, and suddenly I thought, 'He's old!' He smiled at me; his eyes were as young as ever, but his face was beginning to crumble; it will go on crumbling until the day it decomposes. Since then, I haven't stopped thinking: 'He's good for ten or fifteen years, twenty years, perhaps. Twenty years is so little time! And then he'll die. He'll die before me.' There are nights when I awaken with a start and say to myself, 'He'll die before me.' He was talking with Henri this morning, they were saying they would have to start all over again, that one always started all over again, that one can't do otherwise; they were making plans, they were arguing. And I was looking at his teeth; it's the only constant thing in a body - the teeth, where the skeleton bares itself. I was looking at Robert's skeleton and I was saying to myself, 'He's waiting for his hour? The hour would come. We're allowed to linger a while, some more, some less, but none of us are ever spared. I shall see Robert stretched out on a bed, his skin waxen, a false smile on his lips; I'll be alone before his body. What lies, those peaceful monuments of stone sleeping side by side in their crypts, and those couples entwined on their funeral urns! They can mix our ashes together as much as they want to, but they won't unite our deaths. For twenty years, I believed we were living together; but no, each of us is alone, imprisoned in his body, with his arteries hardening under his withering skin, with his liver, his kidneys, wearing out and his blood turning pale, with his death which ripens noiselessly inside him and which separates him from everyone else.
ahhhhhhh
I am here. They are living, they speak to me, I'm alive. Once more, I've jumped feet first into life. Words are entering my ears; little by little, they take on meaning. Here are the estimates for the weekly and the layouts Henri suggests. Do I have an idea for, a name? None of the ones they've thought of so far are suitable. I try to think of a name. I say to myself that, since they were strong enough to wrest me from death, perhaps they will know how to help me to live again. They will surely know. Either one founders in apathy, or the earth becomes repeopled. I didn't founder. Since my heart continues to beat, it will have to beat for something, for someone. Since I'm not deaf, I'll once more hear people calling to me. Who knows? Perhaps one day I'll be happy again. Who knows?
<3 <3
To have been a Party member in Russia in 1930 wasn't a mistake,' Dubreuilh said.
'If you have no right to make a mistake, it was a crime.'
'It's not a question of right,' Dubreuilh replied.
'How dare you set yourselves up as judges?' Scriassine said, without listening to him. 'Do you know Volange's reasons, his explanations? Are you sure that all the people you accept on your team are better men than he?'
'We don't judge,' Henri said. 'We choose sides. There's a big difference.'