My first concern had been to retain my housekeeper, Antoinette, for the evening. She was usually only there in the morning, and prepared a cold meal for me for the evening, which I requested to be as ascetic as possible. That meal was always too abundant at my age.
“Oh! My poor Monsieur, you’re already rather thin!” said Antoinette.
She was quite right! Why had I condemned myself to a miserable evening mal? What had I gained by that? Epictetus, of course, had not even had a table to eat infinitely frugal things, of which I had no idea. But I wasn’t a former slave. The Hindu sages, of course, contented themselves with boiled rice that pious people brought them in a ladle, but no ladle was brought by pious individuals and there are differences of climate, and above all, differences in sagacity.
The word “sagacity” formulated in thought nearly made me burst out laughing. Was it sage not to eat when one is hungry in the evening, and to deprive oneself of a small glass of liqueur under the pretext that it is necessary not to obscure one’s consciousness?
“Antoinette!” I shouted. “Bring me a bottle of Chartreuse and a bottle of Cognac, the best you can find.”
“The best!” Antoinette exclaimed, with admiration.
She viewed the prospect of a splendid repast, which would produce abundant leftovers, favorably. She was moreover, a disinterested soul who only envisaged leftovers in the light of the tastes and appetites of her husband.
“I’ll tell my husband I won’t be there this evening,” she said, knotting her headscarf.
“Aren’t you going to miss him at dinner?”
I did not attach any importance, of course, to the solitude of that husband, and only said that in order to throw up the dust of vain words.
“When it’s a matter of one’s profession!” said Antoinette, suddenly as great as duty.
And she left. A thousand small tasks were imposed on me. I went to pick flowers in Mathieu Lapeyre’s garden
“I have people to dinner,” I said negligently.
“Oho!” he said. And he cut hyacinths and irises, which he enveloped in large mimosa branches.
He cut large quantities. I sensed that I had been imprudent I employing the words “people to dinner” He was vaguely glimpsing men in suits, women in evening dress and luxurious automobiles parked in the little sunken road on to which my garden gate opened.
“Would you like me to make little bouquets for each person?”
“No thank you, Mathieu.”
“And if you need someone to open the gate...”
“No, thank you.”
I distributed the flowers all over. I saw to the organization of the cushions.
Antoinette reappeared triumphantly, laden with provisions. It was unnecessary to say any more to her. She was like the pilot of a ship; everything was her responsibility.
“Until now, you haven’t let me go. You’ll see what I can do.”
Suddenly, I was seized by an idea. I had forgotten the champagne. It was just in time. Could one invite a young woman to dinner and not offer her champagne? I went to buy it myself. A grocery large enough to stock champagne was some distance away. I was incompetent to make the choice. Was the most expensive the best? I asked for two bottles, and then changed my mind. It was three bottles that I needed—no, four. Could they be delivered? The errand boy was ill. I loaded myself with the four bottles.
I was obliged to make a long detour in order not to go past Madame Tournadieu. In spite of my instructions the packaging was imperfect and the gold foil of one or two bottle-tops was visible. What would Madame Tournadieu have thought?
The evening promised to be very warm. As I was walking under the pines I was gripped by an anxiety. What if Roseline arrived early? Why not? I started to run, in spite of my burden. Evidently, she would wait. But she might leave again. Would Antoinette understand that she was the guest? Finally, I saw the squat silhouette of my house next to the old pine. I was sweating.
“Has anyone arrived, Antoinette?”
“No one—but it’s only six o’clock.” And Antoinette added, as she unwrapped the package: “The lady isn’t running any risk of being thirsty.”
I smiled with pity. Four bottles! What’s that? Once...
I was deceiving myself. Alcohol had always made me feel ill. But the inferior being needed to convince himself that he was familiar with heavy drinking.
I had a little time before me. I started pacing back and forth in the garden. Read? There was no question of that. The possibility of books—my books at least—had disappeared for me. Oh, I had better things to do. Life! I was a man who was alive. How fortunate the circumstances were that had brought me to life. I had emotions, I was waiting, I was anxious. That was life. And to think that I had wanted to shut myself voluntarily in a prison of books! I would never read the Enneads. I would no longer occupy myself with the afterlife. I would no longer search for the key to any mystery. For a start, there was no mystery. Everything was clear. Monsieur Spéluque was a lunatic who would have ended up turning my head upside down. Only one thing counted, and that was the pleasure of living. I had never experienced it so intensely.
Then I noticed something that filled me with satisfaction. I had run for a long time with those four bottles, which represented a rather heavy load. Well, I was not experiencing any fatigue. On the contrary, my blood was circulating freely. I could, without inconvenience, run the same distance again with eight bottles. And I wondered whether I could have done that before, when I was…in any case, when I was a few years younger. No, I could not have done. My strength was therefore increasing.
“Is it at half past seven that I ought to serve?” shouted Antoinette, from the threshold.
“Half past seven precisely,” I replied, confidently.
I looked at my watch and I remembered that Roseline had said, lowering her voice: “I’ll be at your house at seven o’clock.”
Seven o’clock had passed a few minutes before. She was slightly late. But wasn’t lateness customary? Yes, it’s a custom as old as the world to be late. And the more the rendezvous has a sentimental character, the longer the delay ought to be. Ordinarily, Roseline was never late. It was a good sign that she was this evening.
I had circled the old pine many times. What was it thinking. Was it conscious of the rendezvous arranged with Roseline? It certainly had some consciousness of it, but different from any that I could imagine. I went back inside to see whether the table was properly set.
Finally, the bell rang. I ran forward, but on the threshold I got a grip on myself. It was necessary not to show too much ardor.
I looked out. There was no one there. The cracked bell rang again, however.
“It must be the milk for the cream dessert,” shouted Antoinette.
The child who had brought it was shorter than the gate and I had not seen him. I took the milk.
“Don’t hurry too much, Antoinette.”
Waiting is always annoying. I made another circuit of the pine, but a little more rapidly. I heard Antoinette drawing a bucket from the well with difficulty.
“I forgot to put the wine to cool, but the bucket is cold.” She panted as she added: “It’s bad for the asthma.”
I went into the little road to see whether Roseline’s silhouette might not suddenly appear. The little road was deserted. There was a delightful glow under the yews, the laurels and the mimosas.
“I’ll be at your house at seven o’clock,” she had said to me...
But time passed. Darkness descended by insensible degrees.
Roseline will certainly come, I said to myself. But was there not an unformulated tradition that dictated that one should be warned when something was changed in an amorous rendezvous? Such a rendezvous escaped the habitual laws of life. Directed by a secret fantasy, it could not conform to normal rites.
“Half past seven passed some time ago,” said Antoinette. “Everything will be cold or dried out.”
At that moment I heard the cry of an owl th
at ordinary resounded when night fell. That cry was like a signal. Discouragement took possession of me. Through the open window I saw the flowers that were visibly fading and shedding their petals around the vases in which I had placed them. I felt an immense fatigue in my limbs, to the point that I let myself fall into a wicker armchair. I would not have been able to run with a single bottle of champagne. And I saw the head of Mathieu Lapeyre over the bushes, his eyes wide, wondering where the luxury automobiles of my guests could be.
But no; it wasn’t possible. Something must have happened, perhaps a serious accident, and in any case, something very important. Roseline had broken a leg slipping on the steps of the perron of her house. I had noticed how dangerous they were. Or her father had been bitten by one of his snakes, which he had the habit of handling imprudently, and he had died suddenly.
But why hadn’t she warned me? The most elementary politeness ordered that. But did politeness enter into it? The mysterious actions of sympathy and desire were above customs. Their movements were not occupied with the preparations for a dinner. If Monsieur de Lusignan had not been bitten and Roseline had not slipped, it was because she had changed her mind. But that hypothesis seemed impossible to me. She had said exactly: “I’ll be at your house at seven o’clock.” And in the tone of the voice, the gaze and the pressure of the hand there was an irrevocable decision.
And yet...
I was interrupted by Antoinette. She had come out into the garden. She was considering me.
“Oh, the youth of today! This couldn’t have happened in the old days. To a young man, perhaps, but to someone of your age…! In the old days, no one would have dared.”
She had the gravity of someone offering condolences to a mourner.
“You’d better eat alone. We can’t let the dinner go to waste.”
And I sensed that she felt sincerely sorry for me. I felt sorry for myself too. I got up from my armchair, though, made a simulacrum of whistling, and said: “All this isn’t very serious.”
But I wasn’t hungry. I retained a hope, but I sensed that it was diminishing as time passed. How inexorable time was in its regularity. Fundamentally, it conditioned everything. When a little more time had passed, all hope would be lost. And I sensed that it was the cause of everything, in a more profound fashion. I was enveloped by time. I was carrying a burden of time by which my being was penetrated. It had made my hair gray, it had sculpted my features, it had given my features an appearance of gravity, which I disowned but of which I could not rid myself. Time, in that form, is called old age. Yes, that was the cause. Why disguise it?
It seemed to me that I had just lit a lamp and that I was going over the small events whose enchainment had produced that evening. Now, I saw that it was a matter, in sum, of a man laden with time, an aging man, who had invited a young woman to diner, without paying any heed to the time he was carrying. The young woman had accepted, and then she had reflected. She had measured the difference in age. Or perhaps she had not even measured it. She had acted instinctively, driven by the obscure notion of time that everyone bars within them. That notion makes it known that, for everything concerning amour, the contribution of time is synonymous with ennui and disgust.
“You can go, Antoinette.”
And I also wanted to shout to Mathieu Lapeyre that it was futile to wait behind the laurels.
Antoinette was far away, it was very late, and I was still listening, leaning on the wooden gate, in case Roseline’s footsteps might resound in the distance on the little road. There are such strange combinations of circumstances! Anything can happen! The night was bright enough. I saw the contours of trees outlined against the sky. The indifference of things was prodigious. The hedgehogs were pursuing searches in the grass. A cricket intoned its song, and then hesitated, and stopped.
In the distance, an owl uttered its appeal and another responded to it in another direction, and they did not come together all night. One could believe that they would never come together. Perhaps one of the two was an old owl. It seemed to me that its call had something hoarse about it; it resembled my voice if I tried to articulate “Roseline.”
And in the dark, in a low voice, I murmured “Roseline!” in order to discover the relationship between the sounds of my throat and the cry of the owl. There was none. It was an absurd comparison. And I told myself that, unlike the owl, I did not have a distant response.
I thought about the length of the night and insomnia. It was necessary to walk in order to tire myself out, in order to forget. I laughed bitterly. At my age one was no longer capable of great efforts. I had already run with the bottles. Old men are rapidly fatigued. I resolved all the same to go into the pines. I left the gate wide open. Who could tell? If Roseline came, in spite of the implausibility of that arrival, she would think that I was not far away.
Once, I would have enjoyed the romanticism of the disappointment and the solitude. But at present, there was no more romanticism in it. I saw a phantom with white hair in the depths of my sadness. I could walk rapidly, simulating for myself a light step, waving the hat that I was holding in my hand, but I knew that a force of ennui was traveling with me, that from now on I was a creature prey to elements of disaggregation, that I had lost the winged secret of youth, the virtue of laughing in company for no reason, of pure innocence in stupidity and pleasure.
In any case, my shadow in the moonlight projected its head forward. I was already slightly stooped. I thought of certain human faces, of a median age, that I had avoided urgently because of the quality of their breath. I had heard it said that one cannot smell one’s own. And the bizarre vegetation that only appears in middle age in the nose and the ears—that was what I suddenly sensed coming to life within me, growing forcefully, like a symbolic sign of age.
Then I ran to escape my thoughts. I reached the road. There was a light ahead of me that was oscillating to the right and left. I caught up with it. It was the lantern of a peasant’s cart. I retraced my steps.
How short of breath I am! I thought.
The wooden gate was open, as I had left it. The cricket was a little less hesitant, and its song more regular. The shadow of the pine traced a more solemn circle. In what measure did it comprehend human chagrin and the paltriness of that chagrin? Would I have dared to confess to it with sincerity, of there can be a true sincerity of a man talking to a tree? And by what means would it have replied to me?
The entire house was full of an odor of pâté de foie gras and cold chicken. The four bottles of champagne, divided in two buckets, were standing upright, like lugubrious futile soldiers. The flowers spread excessively heavy perfumes that made one think of the presence of a corpse.
I thought that, for me, there was only peace in sleep.
THE MASS BEFORE DAWN
But I could not sleep.
A time impossible to evaluate went by. Then, in the distance, at an infinite distance, a bell chimed an hour. I sat up. Silence fell again, and it seemed to me that I heard it take possession of the sky and the earth again with a quiver. I got up quietly and I went to open the window.
It was at that moment that a nightingale began to sing. Perhaps there are nightingales whose songs, as informed naturalists say, are amorous appeals, signals relative to generation, in order that a host of infantile nightingales might be brought into the world. But there are others that sing for the pure pleasure of singing, which are improvisers of the lunar night, which invent stories of birds and men, which develop themes of joy and sadness. And I have sometimes observed, without being able to explain it, that those themes have a relationship with the state of mind of the person who is listening to them.
That nightingale, I understood immediately, did not belong to the category familial nightingales. It would not have a nest nearby. It was a free nightingale, going from one wood to another, and singing while the others slept. At any rate, if it had had a wife and chicks huddling in a nest between two branches of the old pine, it would not have dared to signal it
s presence by a song in such a loud tone and risk attracting nocturnal owls. That courageous nightingale was careless of owls and it filled the vast night with the resonance of its voice.
Scarcely had it commenced than another voice replied to it—that of a cricket. And it, too, was an exceptional cricket, firstly because of the extent of the sounds that it emitted, and above all by virtue of the astonishing delight of what it was announcing. That cricket had come from far away, with a determined objective, a particular intention. And there was no doubt that it had been waiting for the song of the nightingale in order to sing with it.
The state of mind in which I found myself was so miserable that my first thought was that I would never be able to go to sleep, and I think I looked round the room in search of an object to throw into the branches of the old pine in order to put the bird to flight. I did not find one, and in any case, I was ashamed.
Once, I had been scornful of a certain Delgrade who had talked about a property in the country that was badly situated because it was surrounded by nightingales that prevented him from sleeping at night. One, in particular, sang very close to his window. “I took my father’s hunting rifle into my bedroom and I ended up going downstairs. Who knows? I might perhaps kill several and it might make an excellent spit-roast for breakfast.”
So, I was almost similar to that Delgrade, eater of nightingales! I started to laugh bitterly.
That was because the two messenger creatures were in the process of singing with the character of an annunciation. They were announcing the reign of the spirit. They were proclaiming, in that corner of the world, the eternal transformation of creatures in progress toward a more perfect form, toward a better soul, more lucid and more conscious of beauty. That was not translatable into words, but the meaning could not escape me. I perceived, without any possible doubt, its elevated range, and a great frisson ran through me from head to toe.
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