A Singular Man

by Emmanuel Bove

  That evening, as was happening more and more frequently, I could not prevail upon myself to go to bed. The later it became, the less sleepy I felt. I picked up a book. To read at a time like this! I started pacing. A realization struck me. Without being aware of it I had placed myself at the mercy of a single person. I had chosen not to exercise foresight. What stupidity! Every so often I stopped, glanced around. I was the occupant of this tiresome room. I came back here every time I went out. But what if one day I did not come back! Let's imagine this. For perhaps a week nobody would dare touch my bed-sheets, my personal belongings. They wouldn't disturb my things. They would remember all my physical particularities, and not my insolvency. My personality, so vague up until then, would take on relief. If only it were thus, but with me there!

  Until then, the events of my life had all linked themselves together. A host of ties—certain ones of which, admittedly, were very flimsy—connected me to the past. My isolation, great as it was, was not comparable to a refugee's. For instance, I had lost sight of my mother years ago. We could chance upon one another. A few words would be enough to make her understand how and why I was living on rue Casimir Delavigne. But tomorrow, when I would be forced to leave the hotel, without baggage, without my overcoat perhaps, what would ensue? I took fresh heart when I reminded myself that I had had these same thoughts at all the crucial moments of my existence. Had it not, each and every time, been restored to me—that continuity whose loss so frightened me?

  I started pacing the room again. I was as tired as if I had walked miles (perhaps I had), and yet all I needed to do was sit down. To sit down in a bedroom! The one armchair held out its arms to me every time I went past it, but just at the prospect of dropping into it I would feel a dizziness, as if after spinning in a circle I had been brought to an abrupt halt. "What am I to do? What am I to do?" I murmured. I lit a cigarette, my thirtieth. They had an ever more bitter taste, but I went right on smoking. It was three in the morning. On waking up, the tip of my tongue would feel prickly. I was thirsty, but I couldn't abide the water in my room. For one instant I thought of going out. To go down five flights of stairs, create the suspicion that I was escorting some woman home—and what after that? Look for somebody to talk to? A kind of fellowship exists out on the street and in cafés during the final hours of the night. Invite a stranger over to my table? Tell him my life story? Those outpourings now belonged to the past. Nowadays money played too great a role in my existence. The stranger would have asked me to stand him to a drink, and I would have wound up in the position I so dreaded, that of the person who does all the paying. My glance strayed over to my bed. Lie down? Sleep? If I could get some sleep, by tomorrow morning I would be restored to my normal state, which was endurable. I opened the window. So much light from my room was projected upon the building across the way that I switched off the electricity. Rue Casimir Delavigne was deserted. I would have to wait until the next day to see living creatures. In the end I sat down in my armchair, I shut my eyes. My head was reeling. I got up, I started walking again. To clear my path I needed only to move a chair. For hours on end I made a detour around this chair, careful each time not to bump into it. Finally I pushed it out of the way. Oh that gesture! To push a chair out of the way in order to make room for oneself! No, I couldn't stay here any longer. I put on my overcoat and went out.

  One morning I discovered snow upon opening the curtains. The snowfall had turned back the clock twenty years. Not a sound in the street though I saw passers-by come and go. Not an automobile. It looked as if everyone had decided to go out on foot. Paris was suddenly a Paris of former times. Snow clung precariously to all the cornices. My room was bright. Oh what a delightful morning I spent getting myself together! All that I usually found so distressing—the unmade bed, belongings strewn about—, in this brightness everything was cheerful. It was as in some tale. By simply touching objects I felt busy. Voices were ringing in the hallway. Everybody was united as if within a family.

  Suddenly I heard knocking, what sounded like the three raps of people you don't know. Someone had just undertaken to trudge up the five flights on my account. In this hotel, they had never managed to give any precise shape to the ceremony concerning visits. It depended on the mood of the moment. Either the visitor was given a room number and left to fend for himself, or else he was asked to wait while chambermaids were tracked down by means of telephone calls to various floors.

  "Come in."

  Much to my surprise I stood face to face with the chambermaid.

  "A gentleman is waiting for you downstairs."

  "Who is it?"

  "I don't know."

  "All right, I'll be right there."

  I was worried. Never did anyone come looking for me in the morning. A few moments later, in the downstairs hallway, a man walked up to me.

  "Are you Monsieur Jean-Marie Thély?"

  "That's who I am, yes."

  "I would like to have a brief word with you."

  He inspected the premises through his pince-nez.

  "Is there no place here where we could be by ourselves?"

  I asked him whether he couldn't tell me, right away, in three words, what this was all about.

  "Couldn't we step into this room?" he asked, indicating the office the English lady had been fond of.

  "If you insist."

  "I don't especially insist. We would simply be able to talk more comfortably."

  Once we were seated, the visitor said to me: "Maître Logelin, whom you know, has instructed me to request that you come by his office. He will be expecting you tomorrow, at four o'clock, unless you're not free, in which case I will be most obliged if you will set a day when you are."

  Nine years had gone by since I had last been in contact with Maître Logelin. Our relations came back to my mind. As always, their suspension had been owing to some incorrectness on my part that I could not even remember, the upshot being that had I had subsequent need of his advice I would not have dared show my face in his office, and had our paths crossed I would have pretended not to know him. My memory was of a man who had impressed me with his elegance, his distinction, his straightforwardness. When circumstances brought me to his office almost daily over a ten-day period, he was especially congenial with me. He had asked me a great many questions. He found my situation amusing. He had of course surmised what was going on behind the scenes, and if in accordance with the canon of professional conduct he publicly aligned himself with fortune and stability, in private with me he did not fail to criticize the harshness and the meanness of his clients. "You are deluding yourself," was his response upon my revealing some secret or other that would certainly make me blush if I could remember it.

  For what reasons did he wish to see me today? I was hoping, without much believing, that he had suddenly remembered me. Do we not sometimes take advantage of the time that has elapsed in order to try to discover how a given situation, whose evolution we may not have been in a good position to follow, has finally turned out? No. Richard had merely requested his notary to see me. So I was going to find myself, tomorrow, standing before Maître Logelin. And in what circumstances! I would no longer be the young man who arouses curiosity, about whom one wonders whether it's just luck that he has or whether he's clever. Maître Logelin will understand immediately. One day he told me: "Later on in life, after you have my experience, you'll know that a wise managing of one's fortune is not incompatible with the wildest audacities of the imagination." And I was now to reappear before him with experience. But what experience!

  I went to our appointment. I was not slow to perceive that time is not kind to that sort of disabused sympathy. Maître Logelin had put on weight. He greeted me with polite indifference. Once he had striven to make a glittering impression on me. Not only did he no longer see the point of such efforts, he did not even remember them. I was not alone in having lived during these last years. When formerly he had spoken about his experience, he did not suspect there was still more of i
t in store for him. He must have suffered. Outward appearances counted less for him. Was this the same man who one day had complimented me upon my taste? No longer did he feel that pleasure in drawing himself up to his full height, in treading the carpet in his new shoes.

  "Have a seat," he told me without the least allusion to our past relations.

  Perhaps because he did notwithstanding preserve some vague recollection of them he may have been saying to himself: "This is Jean-Marie Thély sitting here in my office. Let's see now. What was this about? Where did I put the doctor's letter? Ah, here's the file. Very good." He picked up the letter between his fingertips with that touch of scorn government officials have for the fanciful formats of private correspondence, then, pressing down on the edge of the desk with both hands, he bent forward. "Let's just see now what this letter says. Rue Casimir Delàvigne, that's where you live? In the hotel of the same name?"

  "Yes, Maître."

  He raised his voice as he sat back in his chair.

  "I have received this letter from Monsieur Richard Dechatellux. Here's what Monsieur Richard Dechatellux says."

  Maître Logelin read the first lines for himself, under his breath. Then, coming upon a passage concerning me, he re-read it aloud. "My wish," Richard had written, "is for you to make him understand that I bear no animosity toward him" ("'him' means 'you'," Maître Logelin interjected), "and that I am acting from no motive other than my personal convenience." (Here the lawyer started muttering again. Only after turning the page did he decide that he could resume reading aloud.) "I would like you to tell him that through your office I am having him paid a sum of eighteen thousand francs, representing twelve monthly remittances of fifteen hundred francs. It would be shrewdness on your part to induce him to place this sum in your care. He might have greater need for it later on than he does today. It is possible, moreover, that the feeling of owning a sum set safely aside may awaken in him the desire to increase its size, which, I assure you, would be a good thing for him."

  Maître Logelin broke off his reading.

  "The rest doesn't concern you. You see, I have hidden nothing from you. My liking for you has even led me to commit a slight indelicacy with respect to Monsieur Dechatellux. He might not be overjoyed to find out that I read to you from his letter."

  I sensed that the notary's relations with Richard had changed, and from this I was profiting in a rather unexpected way, since Maître Logelin's relations with me had changed too. Although offered a far more substantial morsel than in the past, his curiosity disdained it. At one time he had given me excellent advice on the management of my future fortune, and today it did not even occur to him to ask himself how on earth I was reduced to accepting charity. No irony in his voice. No display of false pity. Decidedly, in this year 1938 a truce was in effect in men's affairs. Failure in life, which for so long had seemed to me like a sort of dishonor, no longer had the same importance. Because of the political events that were having their impact upon all of us, we no longer felt ashamed at not having got anywhere. Never as at this moment had I felt this comforting sensation that comes from the equality of all in the face of danger.

  Without bluster, without provocation, without posturing, in a tone that the least little thing might have caused to falter, and above all being very careful to forestall any suspicion that I was refusing with a view to obtaining more, I responded that I was very touched by Richard's kindness, but that I was not able to accept this money.

  "No, that's how it seemed to me," Maître Logelin observed.

  It was dark outside when I left the office. Reflections of brightly-lit storefronts shimmered upon the frosted sidewalks, as if in stirring water. I was in that state of excitement where I am put by marks of esteem. It seemed to me that I no longer had anything to blame on anyone. I was imagining to myself that we all shared a consciousness of having been in the wrong, and that we were better people for it.

  A few days later I found a bill from the hotel in my pigeonhole, the second notice. The owner emerged from his office at that same moment. By way of excuse, he said: "I thought you had forgotten me."

  "No, no, I hadn't forgotten you."

  Slowly I climbed the five flights. At present it bore in upon me that I had been a bit too neglectful of reality. Time goes by. You are absorbed. You live without thinking that every least thing is entered in the account. And, all of a sudden, you discover that the month just ended which was nothing but worries is costing as much as if it had consisted of nothing but joys.

  It was five o'clock. I stretched out across the bed in such a way that my feet, remaining not far from the floor, prevented me from having that feeling of inertia I would have felt lying full length. My fingers were interlaced behind my neck. I had a headache, and this pressure on my nape soothed the pain. I didn't dare draw on my cigarette from fear the ash would fall.

  "What's this! You're lying down!" exclaimed Berthe, who had walked in without knocking.

  Out of a wish to heighten the appearance of our intimacy she would take advantage of my disinclination to show any surprise whenever someone popped up in front of me.

  "You ought to turn on the lights, close the shutters, get up. What's wrong with you today?"

  I conveyed my cigarette, held at a steady angle, to the marble top of the nightstand.

  "Nothing's wrong."

  "Get up then. We're going out for a walk."

  "It's raining."

  "What difference does that make? You're coming with me."

  "If I come with you, I won't come back. No, no, I'd rather stay here."

  Whenever Berthe visited me I would follow her eyes, for she was always trying to detect changes that would allow her to draw unpleasant conclusions. This time I shut my eyes.

  "I don't see the matches," she said.

  "Why?"

  "Since you want to stay, I'm going to make you tea."

  "There's no sugar."

  "Well then I'll go out and get some. Come along, let's show a little life. Aren't you ashamed to just let yourself go this way?"

  It no longer annoyed me to be talked to this way. Its heartiness rang false to me, that was all. Once by myself, I got up, closed the shutters. There were times when it did me good to be submissive. I scrubbed my face with the damp corner of a towel. I shook a little brilliantine on my hair. From the top shelf of the mirrored armoire I took down the spirit lamp, the teapot, the cups. Then I lit another cigarette.

  "That's very good. You've done something positive," Berthe told me on her return.

  "Haven't I though."

  "What's wrong with you?"

  "I've already told you nothing's wrong."

  "You look drowsy."

  "Maybe I am sleepy. The tea will wake me up."

  I watched Berthe bustling about. She enjoyed domestic chores when she performed them at other people's places, at mine, for instance. Why at my place? Was I capable of appreciating her homemaker's skills? For a second I almost told her to leave. I raised a hand above my head, then let it fall lifelessly, as though it no longer belonged to me.

  "Where are the little teaspoons?"

  "I don't know. I don't have any little teaspoons."

  Berthe looked hard at me without saying a word.

  "I've had enough," I said.

  "You've had enough of what?"

  "I've had enough. That's all."

  "Listen to me, Jean. There's nothing more tiresome than innuendos."

  "What innuendos? I'm happy, honestly happy."

  I raised my hand again, fingers closed, but this time to the height of my face, then I opened my hand. This gesture symbolized a blossoming.

  "In that case," Berthe said, "I can say just one thing to you: everything is perfect."

  "I'm the happiest man on earth."

  "I'm very glad. Very glad. You won't hear me begrudging you. Where's the tea?"

  "In the armoire."

  "If you keep this up, Jean, I'm going."

  "No, no, stay. I repeat t
hat I'm happy. Maybe it's because you're here."

  Berthe turned away from me. I walked up to her on tiptoe, doing a parody of a "lover surprising his fiancée." At one point the thought of grabbing her by the shoulders, with apparent tenderness, entered my mind. But I restrained myself. There was something about this charade that shocked me.

  We had tea. I calmed down. Berthe took advantage of this to tell me she understood neither why I didn't ask Richard to find me a position, nor how I could live like this without a job. "I'm still very fond of you. That's why I'm taking the liberty of telling you this."

  Finally, she left me to myself.

  I ceased to think about Richard. You would have imagined he had never existed. The series of events that had unfolded over the past four years had completely vanished from my memory. Even at night, when I was alone in my room, no recollections arose in my mind. I would step out, I would say a few words to this person and to that person, chat in restaurants, all that without anything ever reminding me of Richard's existence. Nevertheless, I sensed that this forgetting would not last. Was it the effect of weariness, was it a reaction to having focussed for too long on the same subject? It gave me no peace. When I least expected it I noticed I had trouble breathing. Then there appeared the feeling of something like cowardice. In order to take my mind off Richard I had to not think about the future, to refrain from introducing the slightest changes into my habits.

  So long as the sky remained gray I remained in this nebulous state. But one morning in early February sunshine poured into my room. There wasn't a cloud left. It was mild outside. I opened the window and breathed in deep lungfuls. I was coming back to life and, for the first time in three weeks, I was reminded of Richard. Then I understood what had taken place inside me. I understood that there was a course of action I ought to have taken, and that by keeping Richard at a remove from my thoughts I had spared myself from taking it. I understood that I had lacked strength. That course of action consisted not in disappearing mysteriously, in such wise that there be no knowing whether I was desperate or furious, but to the contrary in clearly proclaiming my resolve. In letting my relations with the Dechatellux family conclude in a scene so little to my advantage as had been the one at rue de Rome, I seemed to wish to put myself in a humiliating posture in order to render Richard's harshness more striking. In this way I would still have hold of him. Therein lay my cowardice. But was I going to have the courage—I who had however demonstrated this courage in my actions—to say or write to Richard that as of today our relations were definitively severed?