by Paul Nizan
— I don’t understand, the world you come from seems pretty impenetrable to me. Explain yourself.
— It’s not simple, Carré answered. People like you, who think they’ve read everything, can’t see communism as anything other than one system of ideas among all the rest. As though there were boxes with labels on – the socialism box, the fascism box, the communism box – among which you choose for reasons of affinity, aesthetics, elegance or logical coherence. Communism is a politics, but it’s also a style of life. That’s why the Church fears us and is for ever sizing us up, even though we’re not anti-clerical and have nothing in common with M. Combes. It knows that communism, like itself, is wagering on the certainty of an absolutely total victory. No doctrine’s less pluralist than Marxism.
— But how about yourself? asked Régnier. General ideas don’t tell me anything.
— I’ve been a communist since the Tours Congress, for a whole number of reasons, but none is more important than having been able to answer the following question: with whom can I live? I can live with the communists. Not with the socialists. The socialists meet and discuss politics, elections – and afterwards it’s all over: it doesn’t govern their every breath, their private lives, their personal loyalties, their idea of death or the future. They’re citizens. They’re not men. Albeit clumsily, albeit gropingly, albeit sometimes lapsing, the communist has the ambition to be a man, absolutely . . . The best time of my life was perhaps the period I spent as an activist in the provinces, where I was a branch secretary. Everything had to be done, it was a region that was being born – or reborn. The branch committee toiled away like Balzac’s Country Doctor. But for serious! A communist has nothing. But he wants to be and to do . . .
— I don’t see how you, an intellectual, someone of critical descent, said Régnier, can accept a discipline that extends to thought. That’s always been the stumbling-block for me.
— Inveterate liberal! Carré replied. Disloyal to man! You put everything on the same plane. You’re consumed with pride, you want to have the right to be free against yourself, against even your loves. You see every participation as a limitation. You immediately want to revoke your decision, in order to show yourself you’re free to reject what you’ve just embraced. And proud to boot, and Goethean: ‘I am the Spirit that negates all . . .’ When will people stop living with the idea that there’s no greatness except in refusal? That negation alone does not dishonour? Greatness for me lies only in affirmation . . . It’s true that on certain nights, and certain days, I may have told myself: ‘The party’s wrong, its evaluation’s not correct.’ I’ve said it out loud. They replied that I was wrong – and perhaps I was right. Was I supposed, in the name of freedom to criticize, to rise up against myself? Loyalty has always struck me as of more pressing importance than the victory – won at the price of a rupture – of one of my ephemeral political inflections. It’s not by little daily truths that we live, but by a total relationship with other men . . .
They pursued these dialogues at length. By the time a fortnight had gone by, Régnier was beginning to form an idea of a hard, enviable world which it still did not seem possible for him to enter.
Not long after Carré’s arrest, Régnier wrote to Rosenthal that he wished to see him, and that it involved a serious matter concerning one of his visitors at the beginning of April. Rosenthal, who had just been reunited with Catherine and was struggling with her, felt a spurt of impatience as he read Régnier’s letter. This sudden return of everything he had so passionately embraced six months earlier seemed a hateful distraction from what was essential. However, he thought there was no question of escaping, without incurring pangs of remorse that would be abhorrent to him. So he apprized Laforgue – whom he had greatly neglected throughout his stay at La Vicomté, and who had just announced his imminent return to Paris – telling himself he would be satisfying simultaneously the commands of duty and those of friendship, thus killing two birds with one stone.
— Do you remember, Laforgue said in the electric train taking them to Maisons-Laffitte, our arrival at Mesnil-le-Roi seven months ago? I’ve a vague sort of idea we haven’t made fantastic progress towards getting the conspiracy under way. For, leaving aside the Simon escapade and the paternal boilerworks . . .
— We’re wasting a terrible amount of time, Bernard replied. There’ve been these three holiday months holding everything up. We’re going to have to get down to it again. And perhaps revise the actual principle of the conspiracy, as you say . . . It’s lucky the journal has only nine issues a year . . .
— Speaking of conspiracy, said Laforgue, have you at least transmitted the first stuff to the appropriate party?
— Oh, for Heaven’s sake! said Rosenthal.
— Good, said Laforgue.
François Régnier gave them a brief account of Carré’s arrival, sojourn and arrest, which had just bowled him over: he would have liked his house to be an inviolable sanctuary. It struck him as intolerable that the outside world should not expire at the edge of his burrow. There was a fire in the grate, as in April, and the plain was equally grey over towards Le Vésinet. Laforgue said to himself: ‘It’s terrible. We’ve not moved a step forward in seven months. Everything’s still asleep. Nothing has happened.’
Rosenthal, who was thinking only of Catherine, looked at the dining-room as though it were a scene forgotten for years, the ruins of a former life. Everything seemed strange to him. He felt himself the child of a new – and far less dusty – universe: a world of crystal.
François Régnier then explained that he must share with them a suspicion he was unable to keep to himself, even though the whole affair was none of his concern – or concerned him only as the offended master of a place of refuge. He told them that during the entire time of his stay, Carré – who had really taken all the precautions that his situation as an outlaw imposed – had been seen by nobody except himself and Simone (whom he doubted as little as himself), until a strange visit by Serge Pluvinage a few days before Carré’s arrest.
— So one afternoon I saw your friend Pluvinage arrive. I should draw no conclusion from this visit, whose motives I am absolutely unable to see but which was perhaps inspired by one of those inexplicable romantic impulses that move people of your age, if Pluvinage – since there really is a Pluvinage – had not had a very odd look about him – much odder even than his pluvious plover and Alfred Jarry monkey of a name. You’ll tell me this suspicion doesn’t hold water from the novelist’s point of view, since it’s basically tantamount to judging the man by his demeanour, and his heart by his external marks of virtue, which is unserious. But all the same, to an unprejudiced mind your comrade’s got the perfect mug for a perjurer and double agent, one that would immediately inspire mistrust in friends less ardent than you . . . I had the impression he had things to tell me and was awaiting the delivery of a manuscript or the confidences that I expected, but that were still not forthcoming. At which point, Carré came down from his room. Your Pluvinage cried out that it was Carré, who seemed pretty annoyed at being recognized by this individual. Ten minutes later Pluvinage left, after a good deal of stammering . . . So that I’m wondering . . . You understand, perhaps there was nothing in it and Pluvinage is a good and honest fellow, but all the same there’s a singular coincidence between that pretty shady young man’s visit and the arrest of my friend Carré, which I can’t get over . . . Perhaps it’s just a matter of loose talk or carelessness, I shall always hesitate to believe a man capable of informing on someone . . . You’ll find me naive, but informers will always strike me as so much rarer than murderers that I should never get over having come close to one . . . But since this visit is the only suspicious fact, the possible occasion . . . The confidence of the police was too apparent for them not to have been sure of their facts; and their look of infallible and triumphant modesty, which made one want to slap someone, spoke of people who were well briefed by a
n informer . . . Well, that’s all I wanted to say to you . . . You must be far more familiar than I am with such matters. In your place, I should make some discreet inquiries . . .
Rosenthal and Laforgue reflected how they had not seen Pluvinage since their return to Paris, but how this absence on Serge’s part was not mysterious, since the holidays were not over and Serge did not necessarily know they had come back before the reopening of the Sorbonne and the resumption of lectures at Rue d’Ulm. However, they were surprised to discover that Régnier’s suspicion did not strike them a priori as monstrous.
— Let’s be careful, said Bernard. We’ve never had anything against Pluvinage up to now except his mug, and a kind of vague and rather disagreeable servility towards us – his toadying, over-obliging side . . .
— It mustn’t be forgotten either, said Laforgue, that Serge is a member of the party . . . He must have joined in about May . . . Do you remember, we were flabbergasted that the first of us to take the plunge was precisely the one who seemed the least certain, the most ambiguous . . . After all, it strikes me as a pretty serious thing to suspect someone of treachery who had the courage to commit himself, make the jump, before we did . . .
But at that age nothing surprises. The most violent revelations about a man’s character appear natural. One has a weak spot for monsters who confirm a theatrical idea of life: plain beings seem humdrum and false. Moreover, these suspicions, if they were confirmed, promised opportunities for Bernard and Philippe to speak as judges and find themselves pure. For three days they drove Catherine from Bernard’s thoughts.
They summoned Pluvinage to the Ecole Normale, where Laforgue had ensconced himself in a wilderness of silent corridors, halls and dormitories. On the appointed day, while awaiting Pluvinage, they talked about him.
— It would be dreadful, all the same, Laforgue said.
— I’m afraid the tone of our letter may have been rather hard, said Rosenthal. He’ll be on his guard, if there is anything.
The door opened. Pluvinage came in like a cat. Rosenthal and Laforgue fell abruptly silent and wondered if he had been listening to them through the door before coming in. But a strange incident gave them the courage to plunge in almost immediately. For as soon as Pluvinage was in the room, he abruptly turned and bolted the door. Bernard asked him why he was shooting the bolt. Pluvinage denied having done so – and was doubtless not lying: he had not been aware of his action.
— Very well, said Laforgue. Odd for an unconscious slip! Are you being followed?
The conversation got off to a bad start, dragged. Were they going to talk about the weather they were having? Rosenthal made up his mind, he believed in the virtues of brutality.
— Let’s not beat about the bush, he said. Neither Laforgue nor I has asked you here for an exchange of views on the holidays, the rain or German phenomenology. Here’s what it’s all about. Do you know about the arrest of Carré, the CP Central Committee activist, in Mesnil-le-Roy, at Régnier’s place?
Pluvinage looked towards the window, outside which the black tops of the trees bordering Rue Rataud were swaying, and said that he had learned of the arrest from the newspapers, a short while after those of Vaillant-Couturier and Monmousseau.
— All right, said Rosenthal. Régnier, who has told us about an odd visit you paid him just before the arrest, suspects you of bearing responsibility for the police action – whether inadvertently or by design. What do you say?
Serge at first said nothing and went to lean out of the window. A pigeon was walking along the gutter. Eventually Serge said in a low voice:
— So you reckoned that swine’s suspicion was well founded?
— We didn’t reckon anything, said Laforgue. We’re asking you.
— Didn’t you tell yourselves that you’ve known me for years, that you know how I live, that I’m a member of the party? Didn’t you burst out laughing in the Great Author’s face?
Rosenthal replied that it was necessary to examine every least ground for suspicion thoroughly; that no friendship is above the Revolution; and that there really was a coincidental connection between the visit to Carrières and the arrest, which obliged him at least to pose the question. He had Stuart Mill’s precepts at the tip of his tongue, but thought the reference would be distasteful in such solemn circumstances. Pluvinage told him he had always been a moralist, and was still ignoble in the way moralists are. He even pronounced the word Pharisee, which seemed in extremely bad taste to Rosenthal and Laforgue, who came within an ace of speaking derisively about whited sepulchres. They pressed Serge further, without provoking anything but his anger. Serge told them, with manifest good sense, that there can be no proof of negative things, and that he could only say no and cast doubt on their suspicions. He added that he would give them his word of honour, if they wished; but that a word of honour is no better at establishing proof than a simple denial, and he could see they were determined to refuse him their trust.
— But we must know! exclaimed Rosenthal.
— No chance, said Laforgue. Pluvinage is right. We believe or don’t believe, but we’ll never have anything but moral certainties.
Pluvinage left slamming the door, after fumbling with the bolt which he had closed at the start of the meeting.
Rosenthal and Laforgue waited for several days for him to reappear, but he did not come back or give any sign of life. As time passed, they assembled memories that justified every suspicion. The accusation took shape, gradually came to seem obvious: innocent, Serge would have come back to them. This continuing absence, this silence, slowly reassured them. Eventually they wondered what they ought to do, without any shadow of real proof but with strong emotive presumptions. They hesitated to attempt an approach to the party.
— What would we look like? asked Laforgue. One doesn’t turn up at the house of people one barely knows and tell them: ‘You know, your son’s probably a thief, or a swindler . . .’
They did decide, however, to write to the party secretariat, reporting on the conversation with Régnier, their suspicions and Pluvinage’s denials. When they had completed the letter, they found it fitting and suddenly felt their consciences at rest. Nothing in the world weighs heavier than the need to judge – they were finally relieved of that burden.
— When one comes to think of it, Rosenthal said one day, it seemed strange to us that Pluvinage should have informed only because we were thinking about his phenomenal character; but there’s doubtless a great deal to be said about his intelligible character. Who is not twofold?
Laforgue found this fairground display revolting, and told his friend:
— No Kantism, I beg of you! Perhaps we’ve behaved like swine . . .
XVIII
No one dared look Bernard in the face.
‘The family council’s a flop,’ he said to himself. ‘They’re afraid of me. They’re still wondering if they’re going to eliminate me or devour me. Shall I be too tough for my carnivores?’
He looked at them, ensconced in their judicial poses. Mme Rosenthal seated – her hands flat on her knees, motionless – in a Louis XV armchair, in front of the little marquetry bureau on which she wrote her letters and checked the accounts of her charities and her cook. M. Rosenthal standing behind the rampart of the piano, his torso illuminated by a large lamp, his face in shadow. Claude behind his mother, his hands on the back of her chair, like a squire. The circumstances smacked too much of tragedy for all the lamps to have been lit: the large drawing-room was submerged in twilight, as though there had been a local supply breakdown and just one lamp had been brought from the pantry. And in the depths of this domestic semi-darkness where the radiators knocked, like an exile from youth and summer, sat Catherine in a pale blue dress, her neck resting against the fluted wood of the settee: she had crossed her legs, her stockings gleamed, she was smoking.
Never had Bernard e
xperienced such a sense of triumph. The evening before, Claude – wishing to ‘see over the property’ at the apartment on Place Edmond Rostand, which he did not know – had arrived at his brother’s place. He had entered Bernard’s bedroom where Catherine, who had fallen asleep there an hour earlier, had just woken up. He had paled, he had not said a word, he had simply fled. Catherine had sprung up and in turn taken flight ten minutes later. Since five in the afternoon on the preceding day – for twenty-five hours – Bernard had remained alone, waiting.
‘Thank God,’ he thought, ‘the time for deception is over. Events have taken a dramatic turn. They’re going to have to find a way out . . .’
His mother had asked him on the telephone to come to Avenue Mozart. She had said, in her toneless voice:
— Your father, your brother and I have to talk to you.
Bernard was playing his first big game. Catherine was the stake – and, with her, childhood, the future, love, hope.
He came of a generation in which successes in love were almost always confused with those of an insurrection. All women conquered, all scandals, seemed victories over the bourgeoisie: it was eighteen thirty! Bernard was convinced that love was an act of revolt – he never suspected it was complicity, friendship or idleness.
‘If I tear Catherine from their clutches,’ he told himself, ‘I’m definitively saved. If they keep her, what shall I do with my defeat?’
Catherine still did not move. Perhaps she was dreaming; perhaps she was trembling with impatience or dread; perhaps she was simply waiting for this ceremonial to come to an end.
‘All her strength lies in her boredom,’ thought Bernard. ‘Even against me. Is she going to abandon me? Go over to the enemy? When she fled last evening, was she making her choice?’