The Man in a Hurry
Page 17
“I’m pregnant,” Hedwige replied quietly.
No sound, no lights shining near them. They were alone in this suspended garden, high above the ground, totally alone, facing one another and both of them suddenly feeling very lonely, doing their best to transform this new notion into a series of conventional settings (the belly, the outfit, the nursing home, the pram, etc.).
“Well,” Pierre said simply in a very low voice.
“Are you pleased?”
“I don’t know whether it’s pleasure, it’s… it feels strange.”
“Do you understand why I felt so weary yesterday? When I arrived at Saint-Germain I actually fainted.”
“Sorry!”
Pierre pulled himself together; he brought out a large red handkerchief and took his wife in his arms.
“Thank you,” he said, with tears in his eyes.
“Now, I’m going to ask you just one thing, Pierre…”
“What is it?”
“I beg you to be patient.”
“But of course, I’m bound to be! I’ll be stoical.”
“You swear?”
“I swear.”
“No stamping about, no shouting if I’m late, or inundating police stations with phone calls.”
“All right.”
“No behaving like a compass that’s lost its bearings.”
“Very well.”
“No losing me in the street and walking miles in front of me, hunched up like a racing cyclist.”
“OK.”
“No lighting the fire just to make toast.”
“Agreed.”
“No getting angry when the starter doesn’t work.”
“It goes without saying.”
“No smashing up things when they don’t give way.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone would think it was a business agreement.”
Hedwige burst out laughing.
“No, a peace treaty and a pact… for months, dear Pierre, I’m going to be lethargic, a slowcoach, frequently disheartened, clumsy and shapeless. You’ll have to give me credit…”
“Unlimited credit!”
“You’re going to try to live properly, by which I mean respect the present moment. In that way, we’ll manage to…”
“It’s not me who’s speaking in the future, this time, it’s you. You’ll see, Hedwige, I am curable, I’m going to start all over again, I’m going to slow down, I’ll dawdle; you’ll be amazed. Come and sit beside me.”
“Suppose we go down first of all? I’m feeling a bit cold.”
They sat side by side on the sofa. Wanting to be useful, Pierre threw some coal into the fireplace, lay flat on his tummy to use the bellows, and was obliged to open the windows wide to get rid of the smoke. They felt even colder, but gradually everything improved. Hedwige snuggled up. Pierre jumped up and down, buzzed about and made a lot of noise.
“What’s happened to us is wonderful! I was so nervous just now, so far from realizing what awaited me, Hedwige, that I haven’t thanked you properly. My dearest one! What variety there is in our marriage! No one day is like another. It’s like a mad canter through life. I’m totally overwhelmed with happiness!”
“Don’t stride about the flat like that, Pierre, or I’m going to feel ill.”
“Already? It’s even sweeter cherishing plans than it is cherishing a woman. Let’s see: if it’s a girl, we’ll call her Laurentine… or Micheline…”
“Still this need to act quickly!”
“… or Gervaise.”
“And if it’s a boy?”
“I’ll call him Rustique,” said Pierre immediately. “I like Rustique.”
“How ghastly!”
The lunch hour had long passed and they were still musing about the future, mortgaging it. Pierre was talking nonsense and daydreaming, while Hedwige was, even now, having some difficulty in trying to follow him.
At two o’clock, they felt hungry. Pierre rang Prunier’s, interspersing his order with his plans.
“Hello! Passy 17-87?… Where will you give birth?… Could you send me a lobster?… I’ll be the one who rocks it in the cradle.”
“At least wait until you have rung off. Prunier’s are likely to send you a pair of baby-scales.”
“Will you let me cradle it?”
“Oh no! You would demolish it!”
“We shall have a nickel-plated pram with mudguards. I shall push it myself.”
“You’d race with it.”
“Wait for me. I’m going down to get some champagne from the cellar. I’ll be back up in a jiffy.”
Pierre opened the door abruptly without bothering to close it, leapt down two flights of stairs and came back up again.
“Hedwige, I love you.”
Once again, he was out of the room. Once again, the stairs could be heard creaking beneath his weight. He retraced his steps and, taking Hedwige by the wrists, said:
“All I have to give you is my time: it’s entirely yours.”
Returning from the cellar, he seized Hedwige, he made her dance, he lifted her into the air, he ripped her blouse and messed up her hair. He hummed “Blanche-Neige” and sang “Les Dragons de Villars” at the top of his voice, while at the same time juggling with the plates and laying the tablecloth, making jerky and comic movements, as they do in the music halls.
“Hedwige,” he said solemnly, brandishing a large loaf of bread, “you have given me what I want most in the world!”
“A child?”
“Better than that, some prospects.”
CHAPTER XVIII
ONE MORNING, on waking, Pierre received a letter from Doctor Regencrantz:
Monsieur Velocipedist,
The last time I saw you, I informed of you of my imminent departure for Palestine. I was only waiting for a visa for Honduras. Honduras refused me one. Your regulations having forbidden me to practise medicine in France, in order to earn my living, I joined a woollen broker’s firm in Roubaix. Since then, I have been hopping from one job to another, as the hamadryad jumps from branch to branch, but like it I am sure of reaching the end of the forest.
For the time being, I am up to my neck in marmalade during the daytime, and at night I continue my scientific work in France’s third largest city, which is Bordeaux. What made me choose this city is that I know the Korean consul there, who has hopes of obtaining a Korean visa for me so that I can leave your beautiful country. I shall arrive in Paris a week on Saturday in order to put my affairs in order with your administrative authorities. May I call in to see you… if you are not rushing around too much? I have often thought of you. Have you displayed any fine symptoms of overexcitement recently? I wish you much happiness, by which I mean the quickest thing in the world, which is the Idea.
With my sincere good wishes, Monsieur Velocipedist.
Regencrantz.
PS The fakirs, who are motionless by definition, chose as a yardstick for the greatest speed imaginable the Idea, which they call mano-java. Mano-java goes around the planet far more quickly than the Hertzian wave: that is why I hope you go faster than the mano-java. R
“That good old Regencrantz!” said Pierre aloud.
“What?” Hedwige, still sleepy, murmured lazily. She turned her head towards her husband without opening her eyes. She was prolonging that moment of bliss when, like those goddesses in tapestries supported by cupids, she was hovering in the sky borne on the interwoven arms of all those whom she loved: Mamicha, Pierre, Angélique, Fromentine.
How happy she had been during the past fortnight! How delightful Pierre had become! How those momentarily closed hearts at Saint-Germain had reopened for her, the ungrateful but repentant daughter who had thought she could lead her life without motherly help… A mother wise and good, an omniscient mother, Mamicha had smoothed out everything, resolved everything. One night was all she needed. Having arrived the previous day, exhausted, disappointed and drained, Hedwige had set off again the next mor
ning fortified and equipped once more with that surprising sense of security she felt when she was with her mother; it even seemed that, from a distance, Bonne had exerted her magical effect on Pierre, for he was transformed.
“What?” said Hedwige once more, without moving, so that she did not have to wake up completely.
Pierre handed Regencrantz’s letter to her.
“I’ll invite him to lunch,” he said.
“Who?”
“Regencrantz. He’s a Jewish doctor.”
“Did he look after you?”
“No, but I interest him.”
“Then he’s the one who needs to be looked after,” said Hedwige, making a charming expression.
“Thank you very much. I met him, dearest Hedwige, at a time when I was of no interest to anyone.”
“So were you feeling sad?”
“No.”
Hedwige considered this response for a moment.
“Tell me,” she went on, “would you feel sad now, Pierre, if I weren’t interested in you?”
“Yes.”
“So you think you need me?”
“Utterly.”
“Ut-ter-ly,” Hedwige repeated. “Are you sure about it? Explain yourself…”
“No, I won’t explain. Go to sleep.”
“Why don’t you want to explain?”
“Because it’s my business.”
“It’s mine too, and I need to know.”
Pierre sat down on the bed, pressing his face to that of his wife, and gently nibbled the base of her nose. She pushed him away.
“Be serious,” she said, “talk to me.”
“Hedwige,” said Pierre, “for me you are the present.”
Since she did not understand, he tried to make himself clearer.
“A present that I can live in, do you see, in which I can breathe, that has space… a present that’s truly present and no longer that evolving future I used to inhabit.”
Hedwige had got out of bed, put on a pink dressing gown like her mother’s and was laying the table for breakfast, an old Boisrosé custom she was unable to cast off; she opened a jar of sweet lemon jam she had brought back from Saint-Germain and started to dip into it.
“But all the same,” she said, “one can’t smell the future. It’s in the present that there are all the sensations: heat, cold, aromas, this coffee that you’re drinking, well everything!”
“Well, exactly, I couldn’t smell them. All those things you have just mentioned had no reality for me. My only reality was the future, and I firmly believed in this gaseous substance, open to billions and billions of formations and an infinite number of combinations!”
“And now?”
“Now that you’re mine, really and truly, and getting heavier, now that I can hear your fifty-five kilos causing the floorboards to bend, I have settled into the present day as I would into a padded armchair, I am bound by all sorts of exact needs and precise pleasures, I know that it is ten o’clock, that the hyacinth is white and fragrant, that the sun is pouring in, as huge as a Louis XIV brass, and that Hedwige has broken a cup trying to dry it…”
“Sorry,” she said.
“I was living on my own in the future; ever since you have been here, I’m no longer lonely and odd, I confront everything, and everything is straightforward, Hedwige, everything is suddenly so clear-cut, so calm. How lovely the home is when one doesn’t have to be making preparations for departure! How beautiful Paris is when you realize that you were born there… And all that, because you are. By giving you to me, God made me a present: the present. Admire the fact that the French language should have just one word for the two things!”
Doctor Regencrantz arrived on the stroke of one, a crafty look in his eyes, his ears full of angora hair, his bony, rabbinical nose set between two large bagpiper’s cheeks, very pink, very chubby, constantly looking as though he were rejoicing in the midst of the greatest difficulties, simultaneously discussing pathology, a detailed study of the French language, plans for departure and the making of marmalade.
To hit the right note, Pierre welcomed him with an embrace.
“Dear doctor,” he said, “I’ve missed you. Will you admit that you’ve missed me just as much and that you haven’t found many characters as interesting as me for taking what you call replicas?”
“What conceit! I file my index cards between two barrels of jams and I already have as many as I have visas on my passport!”
“I hope they will take you further.”
Hedwige came in wearing a long, flowing dress the same shade as her skin. Regencrantz looked at her without concealing his admiration.
“And so, gracious madame, you have married Monsieur Velocipedist,” he said.
“Velocipedist?” Hedwige repeated, intrigued.
“I reckon that suits him well. It was Goethe who coined the word. He spoke of a velocipedist future. He even added that we would die of it.”
“Do you hear that, Pierre?” said Hedwige.
“And at a time when the Weimar Gazette only came out once a week, Goethe was already forecasting an iron age when newspapers would appear three times a day.”
“The world has always moved quickly,” said Pierre with a shrug of his shoulders, “yet people no more know how to recognize speed than they know how to detect past beauty and former love affairs on the wrinkled faces of old women. ‘By taking the train too frequently from Paris to Saint-Germain,’ said Thiers in the 1840s, ‘one risks detaching the retina, so rapid will the succession of images be.’ I may add that my wife rather shares Monsieur Thiers’ view. Will you have an aperitif?”
“One only has to set eyes on madame,” said Regencrantz, “to realize that she is exactly the wife you need. Madame is a human character. Furthermore, madame is young and athletic, she won’t have any trouble keeping up with you.”
“Even though I have taken a thousandth of a second to give her a child and she’s going to take nine months…”
“Pierre!” screeched Hedwige, blushing furiously, “please…”
“Believe me, Monsieur Niox, adjust yourself to madame. I can tell from her aura that she has a good influence on you. Otherwise, you’ll go back to your bad habits. Pfft! Lost like a meteorite in astral space!”
“I can assure you I’m looking after myself, doctor.”
“Good, very good. You’re not alone on our terrestrial globe, you should think of others, of those who do not have your openness of judgement. You’re an intelligent man and you’re letting yourself get caught in the oldest, best-known trap of all: tomorrow, pigs may fly.”
Hedwige wore an inscrutable smile. Regencrantz gave her a crafty look.
“A doctor is allowed to be indiscreet,” he said. “Does Monsieur Niox make you happy? Dare tell me in his presence.”
“You are not indiscreet,” she replied, “and I make no secret of my happiness.”
“I see,” said Regencrantz solemnly. “He makes you happy, but he makes you feel seasick. If I were President of France, I would punish you, Monsieur Niox.”
“Presidents don’t punish, they reprieve.”
“I would sentence you to stand still.”
“Under arrest,” Pierre corrected him.
“No, no! I know your interesting language very well, I said ‘to stand still, to several days not moving’.”9
“Why not for an entire life, like a fakir?”
“That would be a fair punishment. It’s the one St Simeon Stylites inflicted on himself. I’ve got a leaflet about him that I’ll show you. The case of this saint is a curious one.”
“Do you also take replicas of saints?”
The doctor had a good appetite: he made sure he got not just his lunch, but his dinner too. He polished off his third chop, the half-kilo of sautéed potatoes that Pierre piled on his plate, and he droned on knowledgeably:
“Before climbing up his pillar, Simeon was a successful man.”
“A runner… a womaniser,” laughed Pierre.
“For someone who didn’t care for fame…” Pierre intervened.
“They sent up his food by a rope. He remained night and day, stuck up there, not moving, in the same position, because his platform was too narrow for him to stretch out on it.”
“Were there railings?” asked Hedwige, who felt giddy listening to this story.
“That’s much debated… I also have a leaflet about a Lombard deacon who tried to imitate the Stylite in Dresden. The cold caused his toenails to fall out and the bishops convened to make him come down from his pillar. Do you understand, my dear fellow, the lesson these sages are giving you?”
“Regencrantz, you bore me with your sermons, which are outdated in any case. You’re out of touch; you’d do better to ask Hedwige questions and, above all, to eat. Another slice of foie gras?”
Pierre emptied the entire dish onto his guest’s plate.
“With pleasure. So, madame, your husband is no longer a velocipedist? Have you cured him? Ha! ha!”
Hedwige held out both hands, palms up, in a gesture of charming modesty; her supple fingers reached outwards like a cornucopia, and only her golden eyes were laughing while, out of politeness, her expression remained serious, for she found the little doctor excessively comical. He looked less like a little doctor, she thought, than a large microbe.
“I am cured, as you say,” Pierre continued, “even though this word does not mean anything since I was never ill—a drop of red wine, doctor?—I am cured or, rather, I have adopted a new approach. You remember, Regencrantz, I often spoke to you about this bath of slowness in which France wallows. We continue to think of ourselves as light-footed and speedy without noticing that every other country has overtaken us. At the Olympic Games, I suffered a martyr’s death watching those whom we persist in calling ‘clumsy Germans’, as in eighteenth-century fairy tales, outperform us in the preliminary heats. Nowadays, it’s we who churn out copious one-thousand-page theses and they who turn everything upside down with the Essay on Relativity, which has three pages. Here people reckon that’s not being serious. The French think only of their own centre of gravity; they have positioned it so low (left of centre) that they haven’t any spurt left. Our army is nothing but a load of office scribblers on wheels; we have put springs everywhere to deaden the shock; but where has anyone seen a racing vehicle that has springs? The sprinter would be killed at the first bend. In any case, we don’t make sprinters; we are artists, we build statues of sprinters… a shot of brandy, Regencrantz?”