In the first place, the weather is so warm in Paris that every night means a Turkish bath of eight or nine hours’ duration. I rise overcome by the fatigue of this sleep in a hot-air bath, and I pace for an hour or two before a white canvas, intending to draw something. But my mind is empty, my head is empty. I am no longer a painter! This useless effort to work is exasperating. I have models come to me; I place them, and they give me poses, motions, expressions that I have painted to satiety. I make them dress again, and put them out.
Really, I can no longer see anything new, and I suffer from it as if I were becoming blind. What is it? Fatigue of the eye or the brain; exhaustion of the artistic faculty or extreme weariness of the optical nerve? Who knows. It seems to me that I have ceased discovering in the unexplored corner that I have been permitted to visit. I no longer perceive but what everyone knows, I do what all poor painters have done; I have no longer anything but a single subject and the object only of a vulgar pedant. Formerly, not so very long ago, the number of new motifs seemed to me unlimited and I had such a variety of means to express them that I was puzzled how to choose, and this alone made me hesitate. And now, all at once, the world of subjects of which we have had but a glimpse has become de-populated, my pursuit has become powerless and fruitless. People who pass by have no more sense for me; I no longer find in every human being that character and savor which I so liked to discover and reproduce. I believe, however, that I could make a very pretty portrait of your daughter. Is it because she resembles you so much that you are confounded in my mind? Perhaps so.
So, after having forced myself to sketch a man or a woman who is not like every known model, I have determined to get lunch somewhere since I no longer have the courage to sit myself down in my own dining room. The boulevard Malesherbes looks like a jungle avenue imprisoned in a dead city. Every house stinks of being empty.
On the street, sprinklers throw fan-shaped showers of white rain, splashing the wooden pavement, which exhales a vapor of wet tar and stable washings; and from one end to the other of the long descent from the Parc Monceau to Saint-Augustin one perceives five or six black shapes—passersby of no importance, tradesmen or servants.
The shade of the plane trees spreads at their roots on the scorching sidewalks a peculiar stain that you might think was liquid, like spilled water drying. The immobility of the leaves in the branches and of their gray silhouette on the asphalt expresses the exhaustion of the roasting city, somnolent and transparent like a laborer sleeping on a bench in the sun. Yes, the beggar woman sweats and stinks horribly through her sewers, the cellars and kitchen vents, and the streams where the filth of the streets is flowing. That’s when I think of those summer mornings in your orchard full of tiny wildflowers that give the air a taste of honey. Then, sickened already, I go into the restaurant to observe bald, fat, exhausted-looking men eating, their waistcoats half open, their foreheads gleaming with perspiration. All the food here feels the heat, the melons melting under ice, the soft bread, the overcooked vegetables, the purulent cheese, the fruit that’s ripened in the storefront. And I come out nauseated and walk home to take a nap until dinnertime, when I go to the Cercle.
There I find—always—Adelmans, Maldant, Rocdiane, Landa, and all the others who bore and exhaust me as much as barrel organs.
Each one has his tune, or his tunes, which I’ve heard for the last fifteen years, and they play them together every evening at the Cercle, which is, it would seem, a place where one goes to be amused. They ought to change my generation for me—my eyes, ears, and mind are satiated with it. They continue making their conquests, they boast of them, they even congratulate one another.
After yawning as many times as there are minutes between eight o’clock and midnight, I go back home, undress, and retire, thinking everything will be just the same the next time I wake up.
Yes, my dear friend, I’m at that age when a bachelor’s life becomes intolerable because there’s nothing new for me under the sun. A bachelor should be young, curious, greedy. . . . When you are no longer all that, it becomes dangerous to be free. God! How much I loved my liberty once, before I loved you more! How it weighs on me now. Liberty, for an old bachelor like me! It’s emptiness, emptiness everywhere. It’s the path of death, with nothing inside to keep him from seeing the end. It’s the ceaseless repetition of this question: What shall I do? Whom shall I go to see, not to be alone? And I go from companion to companion, from handshake to handshake, begging a little friendship. I gather crumbs, which do not constitute a loaf. You, yes, I have you, my friend, but you don’t belong to me. It may even be you who are the cause of the anguish from which I suffer, for it’s the desire for your contact, your presence, the same roof over our heads, the same walls enclosing our existence, the same interests oppressing our hearts, the need of a community of hopes, of sorrows, of pleasures, of joy, of sadness, and also of those material things that fill me with so much care. You’re mine—that is, I steal a little of you now and then. But I would breathe always the same air that you breathe, share everything with you, make use of only those things that belong to us both, feel that all which constitutes my life is yours as much as mine—the glass from which I drink, the seat on which I rest, the bread I eat, and the fire that warms me.
Goodbye, return soon. I suffer too much away from you.
Olivier
Roncières, August 8
My friend, I’m ill, and so exhausted that I believe you wouldn’t recognize me. I believe I’ve wept too much. I must rest a little before returning, for I can’t show myself to you as I am. My husband leaves for Paris the day after tomorrow and will bring you news from us. He expects to take you to dinner somewhere, and requests me to ask you to wait for him at your house at about seven o’clock.
As for me, as soon as I feel a little better, as soon as I get rid of this face of a disinterred body, which frightens myself, I shall return near you. I too have only Annette and you in the world, and I wish to offer each of you all I can give without robbing the other.
I hold out my eyes that have wept so much, that you may kiss them.
Any
When Olivier Bertin received this letter, which announced a still protracted return, he had a great mind, an immoderate desire, to take a carriage for the station and the train for Roncières; then, thinking that Monsieur de Guilleroy would be returning the next day, he was resigned and began to wish for the husband’s arrival with almost as much impatience as if it had been that of the wife herself.
Never had he loved Guilleroy as he did during those twenty-four hours of waiting.
When he saw him enter he rushed toward him, with hands outstretched, exclaiming, “Ah, dear friend, how happy I am to see you!” The other man also seemed much gratified, especially delighted to return to Paris, for he had not led a very gay life in Normandy the past two weeks.
They sat down on a sofa just large enough for two, in a corner of the studio, under a canopy of Oriental stuffs, and again shook hands, visibly affected.
“And how is the countess?” Bertin asked.
“Not well. She has been very much broken up, very much affected, and she is recovering too slowly. I even confess that I am rather uneasy about her.”
“But why doesn’t she return?”
“I don’t know. It’s been impossible for me to induce her to come back here.”
“What does she do all day?”
“Well, she weeps, and thinks of her mother. It’s not good for her. I’d very much like to have her decide on a change of air, to leave the spot where it all took place, you understand?”
“And Annette?”
“Oh, she’s a flower, a blooming flower.”
Olivier smiled with joy. Again he asked, “Did she feel much grief?”
“Yes, much, very much, but you know, grief can’t last at eighteen years of age.” After a silence, Guilleroy continued, “Where shall we dine, my dear fellow? I greatly need to brighten up, to hear some noise, to see some life.”
And they started out, arm in arm, toward the Champs-Élysées. Guilleroy, agitated by the reawakening of Parisians when they return, and to whom the city, after every absence, seems younger and full of possible surprises, questioned the painter on myriad details, on what had been done, on what had been said; and Olivier, after some indifferent replies that reflected all the weariness of his solitude, spoke of Roncières, endeavored to catch from this man and to gather around him that almost material something imparted to us by people whom we meet, that subtle emanation one carries away on leaving them and retains for one’s self for a few hours, and which then evaporates in the new atmosphere.
The heavy sky of a summer evening was weighing down upon the city and on the great avenue where, under the foliage, the lively refrains of open-air concerts were beginning to flutter. The two men, sitting on the balcony of the Ambassadeurs, looked down on the still-empty benches and chairs of the enclosure beneath them up to the little theater where the singers, in the dull mingled light of the electric globes and the waning day, displayed their brilliant costumes and rosy complexions.
Guilleroy, rosy himself, murmured, “Oh, I’d rather be here than back there.”
“And I,” retorted Bertin, “I’d rather be back there than here.”
“You can’t mean that.”
“Parbleu. Paris seems tainted for me this summer.”
“My dear fellow, it’s Paris all the same.” The deputy seemed to be having a happy day, one of those rare days of ribald effervescence when serious men do foolish things. He was looking at two cocottes dining at the next table with three thin and superlatively correct young men, and slyly interrogating Olivier about the women whose names were familiar and to be heard every day. Then he murmured in a tone of profound regret, “You’re lucky to have stayed a bachelor. You can see many things—and do them too.”
But the painter disagreed, and like anyone tormented by an adamant notion, he made Guilleroy the confidant of his misery and isolation. When he had recited the entire litany of his distress and, urged by the need to relieve his heart, had related with simplicity if not brevity how much he would have cherished the love and steadfastness of a woman situated at his side, the count in his turn granted that marriage had its good points. Then he recovered his parliamentary eloquence to vaunt the sweetness of his family life and to glorify the countess in a eulogy that Olivier followed gravely, frequently nodding his approval.
Glad to hear her spoken of so enthusiastically, yet jealous of this intimate happiness that Guilleroy celebrated so dutifully, the painter ended by murmuring with sincere conviction, “Oh yes, I can see how lucky you’ve been!”
The deputy, flattered, agreed, then continued, “I’ll be very glad to see her back home—really, she’s given me some concern just now. See here, since you’re so bored in Paris, you’re the one who should go down to Roncières and bring her back. She’ll listen to you, Olivier, you’re her best friend, while a husband—well, you know. . . .”
Delighted, Olivier replied, “Me? I’d ask for nothing better than to see her home. However, don’t you think it might annoy her to see me coming in that way?”
“No, not at all. Go to Roncières. Go for me, mon cher.”
“Of course I will then, I’ll leave tomorrow on the one o’clock train. Do I need to send her a dispatch?”
“No, I’ll take care of that. I’ll explain that you’ll find a carriage at the station.”
Since they’d finished their dinner, they started back up the boulevard, but in about half an hour the count left the painter suddenly on the pretext of an urgent matter he’d quite forgotten.
2
THE COUNTESS and her daughter, dressed in black crepe, had just seated themselves opposite each other for lunch in the large room at Roncières. Ancestral portraits, artlessly presenting one in a cuirass, another in a leather jerkin, this one in the powdered costume of an officer of the gardes françaises, that one as a colonel of the Restoration, were hung in a line upon the walls, forming a collection of the dead and gone Guilleroys, in old frames from which the gilt was falling. Two servants, with muffled steps, were beginning to wait upon the silent women, and the flies made a little cloud of black dots, whirling and buzzing around the glass chandelier suspended over the center of the table.
“Open the windows,” said the countess. “It’s a little cool in here.”
The three tall windows, extending from floor to ceiling and as large as bay windows, were opened wide. A breath of balmy air, laden with the perfume of warm grass and the far-off noises of the country, poured in through these three large gaps, mingling with the somewhat damp air of the room, shut in by the thick walls of the castle.
“Ah, that’s good,” said Annette, drawing a deep breath.
The eyes of the two women had turned toward the outside, and they were looking beneath the clear blue sky—somewhat veiled by the midday mist that was reflected upon the fields overflowing with sunshine—at the long greensward of the park, with its clumps of trees here and there, and its perspective opening afar on the yellow country, illuminated as far as the distant horizon by the golden glimmer of ripening grain.
“We’ll take a long walk after lunch,” said the countess. “We might walk as far as Berville, following the river—it would be too warm in the fields.”
“Yes, Maman, and we’ll take Julio along to stir up some partridges.”
“You know your father forbids it.”
“Oh, but since Papa’s in Paris. It’s so funny to see Julio pointing. Here he comes, teasing the cows. Dear me, how funny he is!” Pushing back her chair, she rose and ran to the window, from which vantage she cried out, “At ’em, Julio, at ’em.”
On the lawn, three heavy cows, stuffed with grass, overcome with the heat, were resting, lying on their sides, their bellies protruding from the pressure of the ground. Bounding from one to another, barking, scampering, wildly mad with joy, both furious and feigned, a hunting spaniel, slim, white and red, whose curly ears were flying at every bound, was bent on making the three great beasts get up, which they would not do. That was evidently the dog’s favorite trick, in which he indulged whenever he saw the cows lying down. Annoyed, but not frightened, they looked at him with their great moist eyes, turning their heads around to follow him.
Annette, from her window shouted, “Fetch them, Julio. Fetch them.”
And the spaniel, excited, grew bolder, barked louder, ventured as far as their cruppers, making believe he would bite. They began to grow uneasy, and the nervous shivering of the skin, to shake the flies off, became more frequent and longer.
Suddenly the dog, carried along by the speed that he was unable to check in time, came bounding so close to a cow that, in order not to tumble against her, he had to clear her with a leap. Grazed by it, the animal was frightened, and first raising her head, finally gathered herself slowly upon her four legs, sniffing loudly. Seeing this one up, the other two immediately followed her example, and Julio began to circle around them in a triumphal dance, while Annette congratulated him.
“Bravo, Julio, Bravo!”
“Come,” said the countess, “come to lunch, my child.”
But the young girl, shading her eyes with her hand, exclaimed, “Look, there comes the telegraph messenger!”
In the invisible path, lost amid the wheat and oats, a blue blouse seemed to glide along the surface of the grain, and approached the castle with the uniform ring of a man’s step.
“Heavens!” murmured the countess. “I only hope he doesn’t bring bad news.”
She was still trembling with the fear that long remains after the death of some beloved companion announced in a dispatch. Now she could not tear off the gummed band to open the little blue paper without feeling her fingers and her soul bestirred, believing that from those folds which took so long to straighten out was to come a grief that would again c
ause her tears to flow.
Annette, on the contrary, full of youthful curiosity, hailed the advent of the unknown. Her heart, which life had just bruised for the first time, could anticipate only joys from that black and threatening pouch suspended at the side of the mail carriers who scatter so many emotions through the streets of the cities and over the byways of the country.
The countess had stopped eating, following in her thoughts the man coming toward her bearing a few written words that might wound her as a knife thrust in her throat. The anguish of experience made her breathless, as she tried to guess what this hurried news might be. About what? About whom? The thought of Olivier crossed her mind. Was he sick? Even dead?
The few minutes she had to wait seemed interminable; then when she had torn open the dispatch and recognized her husband’s name, she read, “I am to tell you that our friend Bertin leaves for Roncières by the one o’clock train. Send phaeton, station. Regards.”
“What is it, Maman?”
“It’s Monsieur Olivier Bertin who’s coming to see us.”
“Oh, how wonderful! When’s he coming?”
“Right away.”
“The four o’clock train?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, how kind he is!”
But the countess had turned pale, for a new anxiety had lately been growing within her, and the painter’s sudden arrival seemed to her as painful a menace as anything she could have foreseen.
“You’ll go to meet him with the carriage,” she said to her daughter.
“But, Maman, aren’t you coming?”
“No, I’ll wait for you here.”
“Why? He’ll be so upset.”
“I’m not feeling well.”
“You felt like walking to Berville just now!”
“Yes, lunch must have made me ill.”
“You’ll be feeling better before he gets here.”
“No, in fact I’m going up to my room now. Let me know as soon as you return.”
Like Death Page 12