No, he would not be disturbed for anything in the world. His would be a centralization of the self, a refusal to overdiversify, to grant a moment's sympathy to anything whatsoever. He could plainly see the limitations of his mind. He had read and reread a short Life of Benjamin Franklin, which had ended with these words: "he wrung the most he could out of himself". Leniot would reflect: "Franklin must have despised himself as I myself do; but he found the way to be great in the eyes of men . . . that is the path to follow and without faltering". He was sparing of himself. When Fermina Marquez appeared at the school bringing with her a fresh spirit, he admitted that he had allowed himself to be distracted for an instant. The most wonderful eyes in the world were not supposed to divert him from his commendable goal. Had Caesar so much as on a single occasion looked fondly at the daughters or wives of the Gaulish chieftains? When from the ramparts' top, they entreated him by exposing their breasts; or again, when on the evening of a battle they were brought in herds to the proconsul's camp, had he ever experienced the slightest thrill of pity, a moment of desire for the prettiest and most unfortunate of them? Nevertheless, they were absolutely his to command; and they sensed their master perfectly in this diminutive, bald, well-shaven man! How often Joanny had imagined scenes of this sort . . .
Well then, he himself just like Caesar was destined to be admired by men and loved by women. It was unworthy of him to admire and love in return. Or rather, perhaps he could love but only a captive woman, that is to say one humbled and imploring who grovelled at your feet and fearfully kissed your hands. Yes, but could such a woman be found anywhere other than in novels whose actions took place in the colonies?
Not having a sister, seeing little of girls, Leniot instinctively recoiled from those pert creatures who, with their mockery, so severely test the timid and solemn pride of very young men. It is pretty hard for a boy who compares himself exclusively with the likes of Franklin and Julius Caesar to hear himself ridiculed for a blunder committed while serving tea, or for the over-vivid green of a new tie. Bursting with resentment, he did not forget the memory of occasions when he had been a laughingstock and when inane, older girls had made fun of him, "silly little geese, provincial peasants with their rustic tones". But the evocation of their accent was not enough to avenge Leniot for the wounds they had inflicted on his self-esteem. No — and as he drew closer to his sixteenth year, he became more convinced of this — what would truly give him his revenge, what would conclusively fix his position and his attitude towards women was a seduction. By this expedient, from the child he was at the outset, he would become a man; then unquestionably he would at last be able to approach those as yet uninitiated little fools without blushing. By this expedient as well, he would experience a new kind of triumph: he would know what a man feels to see a girl sacrifice her scruples, sense of decency and all her years of innocence for him. "And a woman who gives herself, isn't she failing her entire sex?" Yes, just seduce one of them! How your conqueror's heart beats feverishly at this thought!
So Leniot mused as he smoked his after-lunch cigarette in the grounds. At this precise moment, Mama Dolore and the young Colombian girls appeared round an avenue. Leniot hastened to join them and, while greeting them, looked Fermina implacably in the face as one would an enemy. The thought had just occurred to him: "Why shouldn't it be you?"
Suddenly the temerity of this idea struck him; it seemed to him as though all his blood were sweeping back in flight towards his heart. This girl was so beautiful, so arrestingly graceful and majestic in her youthfulness that he would never dare even allow her to see the confusion into which her presence threw him. And then, just as abruptly, his will reasserted itself and drove the overheated, altogether electrified blood back into his veins. Oh yes! He dared; he would show them! He began to walk at her side. He could envisage everything he proposed to accomplish. With care, he measured the distance separating him from the first kiss. And here once again his courage failed him. Yet where was the urgency? But now he came up against an obstacle which his timidity — quivering and recalcitrant — refused to clear. It was not that he was afraid of setting himself up as Santos Iturria's rival. On the contrary; even were it to end with a fight in which he, Leniot, would certainly be beaten, he would keep the very considerable prestige of having defied the school hero
all on his own . . . "and over a woman as well". Nor was it that he thought he might be treated as a child and disregarded because of his age; besides, Fermina Marquez was barely a year older than him. So whence did this obstacle stem if not from his own timidity? And yet he did not lack pluck. The essential point was to make a start; and this was bound to be simple; even amongst the classical writers, their lovers appeared to feel no embarrassment in declaring their love. Moreover, Santos and Ortega and other pupils in the upper forms would frequently visit the linen room to steal kisses off the young linen maids one after another. To be sure, this only involved linen maids. But one morning, in the dining hall, Pablo boasted that he had slipped love letters into the hands of their young female guests at the time of last Saint Charlemagne's day, yes love letters, and under the noses of their parents. And one of them had even replied — what more could a gallant man say?
She had replied.
"So why should I waver?" said Leniot to himself.
IX
He waited for evening prep, for the end of his working day to go back over it all, to organize his ideas and test the constancy of his resolve. It was precisely on that evening that the supervision of prep had been entrusted for the first time to a young tutor, Mr Lebrun, who had entered the school's service a week previously. It is difficult to imagine the anxiety and irritation of a young tutor who is just starting out; it is impossible to conceive of the sort of dizziness overcoming him when he sees himself quite alone with his back to the wall on a rostrum, facing and slightly looking down at forty youngsters aged between fifteen and seventeen. Mr Lebrun was especially agitated. In the lower classes, he had been dreadfully "baited" and it was specifically for this reason that he had asked to supervise a more responsible prep group — this one, which comprised the pupils of the fifth and a part of the sixth forms. Leniot thought that this new monitor would not dare to disrupt his idleness; so comfortably propped up at his desk, he concentrated his mind on the matter which had been occupying him for several hours.
First of all, there was this timidity which he had to subdue. But it was no longer just timidity, it was terror! And it was a terror which blinded him, which would cause him to squander the most heaven-sent opportunities for speech or action. He regretted not being properly in love; then perhaps this conquest would be easy for him. But confronted by the difficulty of the undertaking, any feelings of tenderness or affection evaporated and the thought of Fermina Marquez was irksome to him, even became painful and humiliated him. Just as a horse is led back to the object which frightens it, so Joanny patiently coaxed his will to face this image of Fermina Marquez he had in his mind and had ended up by finding intolerable.
"Why aren't you working then?"
"Me Sir?" said Leniot, brought back to the present.
"Yes you! Your name if you please?" asked Mr Lebrun, striving to steady his voice.
"Leniot."
"Well then Mr Leniot, will you please work?"
Mr Lebrun was being over-zealous. With the younger prep groups, he had expected that he would be provoked; here he supposed he would make himself respected by taking the offensive. He was incessantly calling somebody to order; and without knowing whether he was dealing with a good or a lazy pupil, he reprimanded schoolboys whom it was unusual to hear being treated like dunces. And he thought he saw in Leniot, completely idle that evening, the prep group's most trying character.
Joanny shrugged his shoulders and pursued his own thoughts . . . What then were the causes of this timidity? The principal one was undoubtedly this notion — which his mother and all the women in his family had instilled in him — namely that a fundamental, intrinsic dis
parity forever separates honest women from the rest. They were two different sexes so to speak. You respected the one; as for the other, "you paid", no more need be said. This view was undisputed and universally held by his mother and the middle-class women of her circle. But in his case, it had naturally been undermined by the education he was receiving at school. Indeed, this wholly bourgeois distinction is unknown to great writers: they exalt abandoned and virtuous women indiscriminately. They even prefer to choose women as their heroines whose passions and excesses have made them famous: Medea, Dido, Phaedra. Occasionally, Joanny would amuse himself by imagining grotesque parallels between these celebrated lovers and the ladies who came to tea at his mother's. The characteristics of the honest woman were ugliness, stupidity, bitchiness. By contrast, the other, the despised one, was beautiful, intelligent and giving. Without any doubt whatsoever, it was primordial man in his masculinity who had established this distinction and who in his own interest had imposed it on his companion. Thus, under man's domination, the fair sex was just like a well-supervised herd, so well-trained indeed, that it had succeeded in doing its own policing and in instinctively driving all the unruly types, all the black sheep out of its ranks. Joanny did not ask himself whether this law was just or unjust, nor whether it was not in women's interests to conform to it; however, he observed that women heeded this law, blindly duped by their eternal master, the grasping lord of the patriarchal era, the Roman husband cum manu. All in all, there was no very great difference: "some are called subservient outside marriage and others like my mother and her friends are subservient within marriage; that is all." —Joanny was pleased with this choice of words; at fifteen, he was proud of having ideas of this sort; he thought them original and daring. At the same time, the old scruples of the pious child in him reproached him for the irreverence towards his mother which his thoughts revealed. Certainly, Leniot's notion of the honest woman had been gravely impaired. But it survived as a central distinction between two modes of education. In the final analysis, all differences could be reduced to that. There were the properly brought-up women and there were the rest. And the basis of the attraction of girls in his eyes was precisely that they formed a third group. They still had to choose between vice and virtue and they derived their appeal from both. Fermina Marquez was a girl; and it was just that which disconcerted Joanny in particular: he thought he would have
ventured everything with a young woman. Well then, yet another reason to attempt the seduction of the little South American . . .
Anyway, it would most certainly be better for him not to be in love at all. He was not for anything in the world to lapse into sentimental foolishness: repeating mawkish passages from novels; endeavouring to compose a sonnet and discovering that the sonnet of Arvers has been transcribed almost word for word; daydreaming; and all that has been achieved is to waste time. No, Joanny had to apply his full store of methodical patience, all the studious obstinacy of the model pupil to this bid at seduction. He had to be dispassionately calculating, to keep an eye on events, to watch out for opportunities . . .
Meanwhile, prep was becoming rowdy. Mr Lebrun, in a panic, was now reprimanding continuously. Joanny heard his neighbour mutter: "This idiot isn't even letting us get on quietly with our work."
"You persist in doing nothing, Mr Leniot?" asked Mr Lebrun aggressively.
"I am meditating, Sir," answered Joanny.
The entire prep group began to laugh openly. Hearing the monitor being held up to ridicule by the foremost pupil acted as the spur. A bait was organized.
"Have you quite finished talking to your neighbour, Mr Zuniga?" shouted the monitor.
"Come now Mr Montemayor!"
"What? I'm being very well behaved, Sir."
"Hey you, yes you there. Your name please."
"Juan Bernardo de Claraval Marti de la Cruz y del Milagro de la Concha."
The laughter turned into howls of merrriment.
Joanny's excitement rose in this hubbub. The desire for a scrap came to him, as did an audacity which made his timidity towards Fermina Marquez seem absurd. He devised the simplest of seduction plans. First of all, he contemplated writing a fine letter imbued with respect and affection like the one with which La Nouvelle Heloise begins. Then he thought that a short note would be better. Finally, he decided not to write at all but to present himself straightforwardly as a friend, and as a friend to the whole Marquez family. Initially, it was of the first importance to gain the trust of Mama Dolore. And for that, he had to become her nephew's friend and protector.
As it happened, little Marquez, a spoilt child, wholly lacked tact in his relations with his schoolfellows. He regarded Saint Augustine's as a hotel, a far less luxurious one than the English and French hotels in which he had lived since leaving Bogota it is true, but for all that he regarded it as a hotel where payment procured service. And Mama Dolore gave him too much pocket money. Instead of responding to those teasing him with his fists, he would hand out sweetmeats to them, hoping by this means to be left alone. Unfortunately, the outcome of this ploy was not the one he had been counting on. His tormentors returned to tease him more than ever. So he would call them tramps and beggars and boast about his father's wealth: "We came as far as Southampton in our very own ship," he used to shout with pride. Finally, one day he was dragged beneath the pump in the yard and drenched. Those who had soaked Marquez were placed in isolation. No snub was spared him. He spent the greater part of his nights choking back his sobs, his head buried under his bolster. He had already lost a lot of weight. In a few days, Leniot could put all that to rights. He would do so. That was the real way of insinuating himself into this family. Afterwards, he would see . . . There were still two and a half months before the summer holidays.
Joanny stood up, in euphoria. He felt a sort of debonair impatience which he had experienced as yet only once; on the day before his departure for Italy last Easter break. He was unable to remain in his place; he would have liked to be able to sing.
Without asking for Mr Lebrun's permission, he went and took Schrader's large atlas from the prep room's bookcase and looked up the map of Colombia in it.
"Mr Leniot, for having moved without permission you will be given nought for conduct."
Joanny smiled disdainfully. He studied the geographical outline of the Colombian republic with care, as if he had planned a trip in this country. The principal port on the Caribbean Sea was called Cartagena; it was from here that she must have left. The prep group had fallen silent for a moment, astonished to hear a black mark being given to the best pupil for the first time. The expression on Leniot's face was observed with curiosity. But Mr Lebrun pursued his advantage. He was handing out a stream of "noughts for conduct". And the rowdiness of the bait intensified. At the end of the room where he was seated, Pablo Iturria raised the lid of his desk then let it come down again with a resounding crash and, turning to the monitor, bellowed: "Calla, hombre, calla!"
Joanny, who had not stopped smiling, returned to his seat. He was full of self-confidence. Above all, he felt safe, whatever happened. "Even supposing the worst, my father is the last person to reproach me for having seduced the daughter of a millionnaire!" he said to himself. He saw his whole life stretching out in front of him as an inexhaustible stock of success and happiness.
"Mr Leniot, you do appreciate that a report will be sent to the prefect of studies along with your nought for conduct."
The nervous exhilaration which had until then borne Joanny up, plummeted all of a sudden: this black mark and report meant that he would be excluded from the roll of honour — they meant a detention, ultimately the loss of the prize for excellence and the ruin of his school career! No, this was out of the question! He pulled himself together, he had to act.
He belonged to a matchless generation which was to leave the memory of unsurpassable audacity and virility to those who were now in the lower classes. What he was going to do would put his name in the same rank as those of the two Iturrias, of On
ega, of those of the finest representatives of this much-vaunted generation. Or conversely, if he were not successful, he would be universally regarded as deceitful and placed in isolation — no, he would quite simply be thrown out of the school. He did not stop to think for a single moment that he might wreck Mr Lebrun's career, perhaps cause him to be dismissed by the administration. He had these words of command circulated: "Continue the bait; I am going to get the prefect of studies."
Then he left the room without condescending to reply to the remark sarcastically flung at him by the monitor whose patience was exhausted: "Don't bother to wait to be told to leave the room, will you? Just go as you please; it's something you have got used to."
Leniot crossed the yard, the grounds and rang the doorbell of the chalet where the prefect of studies lived with his family. Admitted to the presence of the school's most senior official, he related what was going on in the prep room of the new monitor. Normally, they were a trustworthy group; there had never been a cause for complaint. Mr Lebrun was alone responsible for the disturbance.
Fermina Marquez (1911) Page 3