The Man in a Hurry

by Paul Morand

  Hedwige regards this immemorial man as a man of today. Every generation of young women has its particular type of man just as every generation has one author and every author is only ever loyal to one hero.

  Night has fallen. Pierre no longer knows how long he has been sitting on this bench without uncrossing his legs; beside him, Hedwige has not stirred, she whose pliant movements are so beautiful. The ground at their feet, ravaged by winter, is arid and skeletal and the frozen pebbles by the balusters shatter into splinters.

  Up above, the Milky Way resembles a caravan trail worn away by ancient suns.

  “Before God or before any other maker of the stars,” Pierre said suddenly, “I am ready to wait for you as long as is needed, and I have made up my mind not to marry anyone else but you.”

  Hedwige drew closer to him and laid her head on his shoulder.

  PART TWO

  The Price of Time

  CHAPTER XIV

  PIERRE AND HEDWIGE were married at the end of the month and went to live in Neuilly in an apartment that Pierre had hastily furnished and one that suited his wife’s nonchalant habits; in this way domestic problems were reduced to choosing common parts and drawing up demarcations of which drawers and wardrobe space were whose.

  The layout of an apartment is often indicative of the layout of the heart. Pierre and Hedwige had adjoining but separate bedrooms. Pierre had wanted this partition; between him and his wife there was this enormous structure, this mountain of plaster which for two weeks had divided what the law had brought together. The two parties spoke to one another through it from their beds at night and were woken merrily each morning by knockings on the wall; and from each side of this equator, like poles apart, they kept away from each other for the night.

  This was what Pierre had wanted (and Hedwige, both serious and prudish, had not appeared surprised, quite the contrary), not that he had not desired her immediately, for he was in love, youthful and deeply moved by her feelings for him. But he experienced a sharp and bitter pleasure in disciplining himself and starting life as though he had been married for thirty years. He was put off by the notion of throwing himself at Hedwige and taking her by surprise or by legal agreement. Firstly, the fulfilment of conjugal rights had something ridiculous and bestial, judicial and Louis Philippe-like about it. Undressing a woman, tearing off her dress and displaying the wife’s nightgown at the window to neighbours gathered in the street, as in certain Jewish rites, is not really the greatest homage you can pay her. Pierre had sworn to himself not to cast Hedwige all of a sudden into a new universe, that of the senses. And so it was that they lived so chastely that they might have been mistaken for campsite friends, for one of those couples innocently introduced to one another through the small ads at the Touring Club de France. Pierre had used all his strength as a man to stop himself from violating Hedwige as he violated everything else. It was the finest gift he could give her, the greatest proof of his love and respect he could pay her. He had had to make a colossal effort; proceeding slowly is not easy when you are not used to it. And, of course, he also forbade himself that sexual chemistry, those kitchen recipes for voluptuous pleasure invented over the idle centuries. No love in the saddle, no touching-up in the gods, but none of that intimate touching-up that our fathers resorted to either, none of that figure-skating beneath the mirrors of the canopy, none of those breaks at billiards that only entertain old men while they still have the means.

  It was between himself and his passion for Hedwige, rather than between Hedwige and him, that Pierre had erected this partition. He had wanted to put himself to the test: “If I can restrain myself in this matter, I will be able to control myself in all other respects. Other successes will come easily to me, I shall have disassociated love with gluttony and I shall have triumphed over my demon for good.”

  He could be accused of coldness, of indifference; he did not mind because all that concerned him was this haste that had until now spoilt love for him. Only Hedwige mattered; he was concerned purely for her, he cared for her alone, and he wanted to be good and humane with her. If she moved too slowly for him, he would wait for her; if he succeeded in taking her in hand, in urging her on without rushing her, he would raise her to his own speed, but by degrees. By taking her time, nature managed to transform reptiles into creatures that flew. Without risking Hedwige stumbling, he would teach her to fly. The plundering of a besieged body, the conquering caresses, the honourable wounds are a thing and a pleasure of the moment, but when what is at stake is an entire lifetime, one must set one’s watch by eternity.

  Hedwige was waiting: it was certainly her turn. She watched respectfully, with all her solicitous strength, this future that she was embarking upon, this moment that society and novels trumpeted, one that she had not craved and which had crept up on her unawares. A new life was beginning for her under the gaze of this man who was a stranger, a gentle savage and a person of such terrible rapidity who would descend on her in a torrent and, with masterly precision and elemental ardour, sweep her away to goodness knows where.

  Her heart beating behind the white partition, she was waiting and it seemed a long time to her, as long as boredom, toothache, insomnia and all those machines that whiled away the hours. Why did lightning not strike? “I should like it to be all over already,” she thought.

  One evening, she tiptoed into Pierre’s bedroom to watch him sleeping, hoping that his stillness would betray him and reveal the secret of his strength or his weakness. The mystery of a person asleep behind that closed door seemed deeper to her than ever and it frightened her. She watched him curled up into a ball, his thumbs tucked into the palms of his hands like a small child, tangled up in his sheets, no longer knocking anything down as he passed, no longer whirling around except in dreams from which she was excluded. For the first time ever, she wondered who Pierre was and why he loved her, and she realized that what she had exchanged with him were vows, not secrets, and rings that were merely bands and not keys.

  Since she was straightforward and direct, she put the question to him first thing the following morning:

  “Who are you, Pierre?”

  He opened his eyes in astonishment; we are always surprised when others are not satisfied with the image we present to them.

  “I am the person I am to be,” he said, laughing.

  But Hedwige was frowning and peering at him searchingly.

  “Do you realize that I know nothing at all about you, your parents, your friends, your past life, your family history, your character?”

  “I have neither parents nor friends; my character is as easy to fathom as the nose on my face, and I’ve forgotten my past because you were not part of it; in any case everything to do with yesterday bores me, I’ve only ever written one sonnet and that was in praise of tomorrow.”

  “Oh Pierre,” said Hedwige, “you’re not taking me seriously!”

  She looked so upset that he relented immediately.

  “Well, I do have one friend, an old pal named Placide who knows me so well that he fell out with me; but we made up later. He even sent me a beautiful silver and crocodile sponge bag for my wedding. I’ll bring him to meet you for lunch. You can ask him all the questions you please. Pretend to make some unpleasant remarks, the normal number of treacherous things that figure in what’s called ‘a perceptive friendship’, and you’ll learn more about me than I know myself.”

  “I need Roustoutzeff’s book on Animal Style in South Russia and China (Princeton, 1926); it should be there; could you find it for me, dear Placide, while I finish this monograph?”

  “I’ll come and help you,” said Hedwige.

  They had finished lunch and were taking coffee in Pierre’s study.

  “A monograph?” asked Placide.

  “Yes,” said Pierre, “and it would actually be of interest to both of you. I’m writing something about the cloister, which after all I owe in part to both of you. It’s come from the United States.”

  Placide and H
edwige were on their knees, picking up large volumes, knocking down stacks of books and arranging them any old how.

  “Ah! Here it is,” said Hedwige, laying her hands on the copy and, extremely pleased with herself, taking it to Pierre.

  “Thank you, my love,” answered Pierre distractedly, for he was already stuck into Gourhan’s Bestiary of Chinese Bronze. “It’s been superseded.”

  “Ah, now that’s typical of your husband,” exclaimed Placide. “‘Superseded’. It’s one of his favourite expressions. He asks you for something, you go to great lengths to find it and then when you give it to him, he’s already found something better. I can’t recall one single occasion when I’ve been able to do a favour for him in time. ‘Superseded’,” he repeated, shrugging his shoulders. “I know some people who mean a lot to you and who say: it’s been surpassed. But your way of going farther back is to go farther away.”

  “Yes, it’s true,” said Hedwige, “he’s marvellous. He’s a magician.”

  “I don’t share that view,” Placide replied. “He’s fairly successful, but not in his chosen career. He was made to be an office runner, a motorcycle delivery man, an arbitrager, a screenwriter, a switchboard operator, anything you like, but not a collector of period objects. Period pieces have true values and true values pay no heed to haste. ‘Time does not respect what is done without it.’ You can be sure that objects like this, which have endured for three thousand years, have been created gradually.”

  He showed Hedwige a shapeless block of mouldy stone, a lump of excavated jade depicting a wild boar.

  “Is that a period piece?” asked Hedwige, intrigued. “It doesn’t look like a work of art.”

  “You don’t have to have taste to recognize the art of the Middle Ages,” replied Pierre, who had finished writing and was stretched out on his sofa, blowing the smoke from his cigar up to the ceiling. “But I must respond to Placide… in actual fact, a primitive work of art represents countless hours of work and that is what makes it priceless for me. I think of the ordinary man who has put his heart and his strength into it, of the woman, of the family who have sacrificed their eyes to embroider that chasuble or this shroud. But please believe me when I say that those people worked quickly, the time element was not wasted. It’s just that their sense of speed was not ours. A fine piece of material, of gold or silverware, it’s the equivalent of a thousand ploughed and sowed fields, of more than a hundred forests that have been cleared, it accounts for more hardship and time expended than the longest illness. And what wretched tools they used! When I contemplate a piece of ivory or enamelware, it’s as if I were reaching out my hand to all those who made it, owned it and sold it again and again over the centuries: I can hear them, they speak to me. The initial shock you get from a work of art is a psychic one, next comes the technical examination, the patina, the holes caused by woodworm, and other absurdities. The first thing a work of art does is yell at you from afar that it has lived. It projects its own aura before it.”

  Placide gave an ironic smile:

  “I was a student at the École des Chartes. I have a magnifying glass for an eye and always will have. But in your case, we know you have a hawk’s eye assisted by the sensibility of a clairvoyant.”

  “It’s simply that I don’t have the guts to go round in circles, as you all do, without becoming seasick. For you, life is a cycle; for me it’s a flat spiral, Goethe’s spiral; you don’t get out of it by turning back; the backwards gallop is a false revolution, a curators’ revolution; you have to run speedily to the end of each period in order to rise higher. In France (a land that was quick once), we have become prolix and apathetic; the day we rediscover our traditional pace, in a new Middle Ages period, we shall produce more Princesses de Clèves and Manon Lescauts, we shall discover Molières who will churn out their plays, Pascals who will dash off their pamphlets. It’s not through eighteen-volume novels by Madame de Charrière that France will make her mark on posterity, it’s through small portable bombs such as Candide or Atala.”

  He stopped to catch his breath.

  “What was I saying? I’ve forgotten.”

  “You’re losing your ideas along the way,” Placide sniggered.

  “I remember. Napoleon is not concise because he is the emperor, he’s the emperor because he is concise. If I hadn’t been concise, I wouldn’t have got the Mas Vieux or Hedwige. Placide, I’m leaving her with you, I have to go out. You must explain to her in what ways I resemble Napoleon.”

  Sitting in her armchair, her hands crossed like a little girl waiting to be told a lovely story, Hedwige looked questioningly at Placide.

  “Well, madame,” said Placide, “are you waiting for me to discuss the antique dealer with the nimble feet with you? It’s a joke. You know him better than I do!”

  “I don’t know him,” said Hedwige simply. “Who can know Pierre?”

  “Then why do you come to me?”

  “Because you’ve followed his career for a long time and you can tell me about his life.”

  The subject did not inspire Placide greatly, but he liked to hold forth and he could not have found a better audience. Already fascinated, she lapped up his words. He began in a light-hearted tone, mannered and slightly mocking, running through the school years, the successful exam results and the early days in what he called “business”.

  “In art,” he said, “Pierre delved back in time with the same frenzy with which he approached everyday life. From the Gothic, which was his speciality, he hopped over, God knows why, to the Merovingian and from the Merovingian he dashed over to Iranian sources.”

  With a condescendingly forgiving smile, he explained how Pierre had gained ground on everyone else and discovered, sometimes at excavation sites, sometimes in private collections, objects that were ten or fifteen centuries older than the steel trains or duralumin planes aboard which he took them away, and how this “treasure-hunt” satisfied his need for “irrational trips away”. He acknowledged generously, nevertheless, that Pierre, before any of his colleagues in either the old or the new world, had taken the trouble to study ethnography, popular art, linguistics, archaeology and aerial photography, helped by an aptitude and a prodigious memory, which enabled him to take part in excavations and to discover trails with a flair that tended to irritate the specialists.

  “Ah! How many sleepless nights must this dabbler Pierre have cost the collectors!” exclaimed Placide.

  He began to discourse on the subject, which for him was inexhaustible.

  “The great collections are not forbidding piles of trinkets or featureless graveyards of remains as those who attend the famous auction houses imagine. They live, die, are reborn, they improve, they deteriorate. Some of them disintegrate in a day, like a theory. For the art of vanished ages, and especially the most ancient ones, is as inventive in renewing itself as is the brain of a man of genius; living in the earth and even at the bottom of the seas, buried deep down all over the globe, it bubbles upwards, emerges from the darkness, bursts forth, disconcerts people, shakes them up. It’s a constant revolution, a continuous refining. Each discovery is a provocation that demands a response. Such and such a top-quality Sassanid piece will be greeted in New York harbour like a diva; and it will have been enough for it to appear, not merely because of the pleasure it gives, but in order to downgrade what had given pleasure up till then. Solomon’s temple is rebuilt every day, and taste, which we have wrongly made synonymous with talent, is in a state of perpetual imbalance. It only takes a new site in the civilization of the Indus, or a tear in the centuries-old curtain that conceals the Hittite Empire from us, for a museum, until then highly regarded, to be relegated to the rank of an old second-hand dealer. It only needs a tomb opening up near Pretoria and for the small statue of a sleeping rhinoceros alongside a Bantu skeleton to emerge for telegrams to fly and for chapters of art history and market prices to fluctuate in Buenos Aires, London or Budapest. And, as it happens, Pierre was there in Pretoria,” Placide concluded a
s he stood up to drink a glass of water.

  “Go on, go on,” begged Hedwige.

  “But I’m thrilled to continue, madame. I am desirous of pleasing you. Would I not be making myself unworthy of your trust if I failed to retrace the stream of my memory as you have invited me to do?”

  Placide listened to himself speaking with as much pleasure as he was listened to. Begun in a tone of amiable nonchalance, the biography was attaining epic status. Placide became so suitably aroused that he eventually managed to paint a portrait of Pierre designed to kindle an imagination that only required a spark. A portrait he regretted because he was jealous of Pierre, but, for once, truth was stronger than malice.

  He paused again, but Hedwige pressed him with questions; Pierre had taken part in excavations; had he taken any risks?

  “No more than the other archaeologists,” said Placide, screwing up his face. “Of course, in Tse-Kiang, for example, when he was working on the excavation of the famous city built of pieces of Sung pottery that had misfired—imagine that, a city built entirely of Sung vases! A band of Chinese generals captured Pierre and stole his bags of silver dollars. Those are some of the minor misfortunes of a profession that has many high points. In Luristan, for example, at the opening of a Neolithic tomb, when they discovered a funeral cart surrounded by a pack of hunting dogs and forty horses, all intact; a marvellous vision, but a fleeting one, because on contact with the air everything that was made of wood or bone turned to dust, leaving only the bits and pieces, the small bells, the wheel hub—in short, the metal… I also love his story of the skull. Do you know it?”