The Thibaults

by Roger Martin Du Gard

  He broke off in the middle of the sentence, in spite of Antoine’s sustained attention—on account of it, perhaps. How could mere words convey even a faint idea of the breathless life he had led for months on end? Though his brother’s questioning eyes urged him to go on, he dropped the thread of his reminiscences.

  “How far away it all seems! Oh, let it go! Let’s talk of something else… .”

  He was conscious that these evocations of the past were laying their spell on him and, to break it, he forced himself to go on speaking He continued in a calm, detached voice:

  “What were you asking me about? Ah, yes, those pains in my head. Well, you see, Italy in the spring never agreed with me. As soon as I was able, the moment I was free …” He stopped, frowning; once again, it seemed, he had come up against distressing memories. “As soon as I was able to get away from it all,” he went on, with a violent swing of his arm, “I travelled north.”

  He had come to a stop, looking down at the stove, with his hands in his pockets.

  “To Northern Italy?” his brother asked.

  “No!” Jacques exclaimed. A tremor ran through his body. “Vienna, Budapest; then Saxony, Dresden. And after that, Munich.”

  His face suddenly became overcast; this time he darted a sharp glance at his brother and seemed to be really on the verge of speaking out; his lips moved slightly. But after a few seconds he made a wry face and, clenching his teeth so tightly that the last words were almost inaudible, muttered merely:

  “Ah, Munich! Munich, too, is a dreadful place, simply appalling.”

  Antoine cut him short hastily.

  “Anyhow, you should … Until we’ve ascertained the cause … Headache isn’t a disease, of course, but only a symptom.”

  But Jacques was not listening and Antoine fell silent. Several times before, the same thing had happened; one could have sworn that Jacques suddenly felt the need to unbosom himself of some rankling secret, and then, all of a sudden, it seemed as if the words stuck in his throat, and he stopped short. And each time Antoine, inhibited by some absurd apprehension, instead of helping his brother over the jump, shied off the topic, turning away stupidly on a sidetrack.

  He was wondering how he could best bring back Jacques into the main track, when a patter of light footsteps sounded on the staircase. There was a knock. The door half opened almost immediately, and Antoine had a glimpse of an untidy mop of hair and a boyish face.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon! Am I in the way?”

  “Come in,” Jacques said, walking across the room.

  On a better view, the caller proved to be not a boy, but an undersized clean-shaven man of no definite age, with a creamy-white complexion and tousled, tow-coloured hair. He hung back for a moment in the doorway, and seemed to dart a timorous glance towards Antoine, but the pale lashes fringing his eyes were so thick that the movements of the pupils were hidden.

  “Come over to the stove,” Jacques said, and helped the visitor off with his dripping overcoat.

  Again he seemed set upon not introducing his brother. Still, he wore an entirely unconstrained smile, and appeared to be by no means put out by Antoine’s presence.

  “I came to tell you that Mithoerg has arrived. He is bringing a letter,” the new-comer explained. He had a jerky, sibilant voice, but spoke now in a low, almost apprehensive tone.

  “A letter?”

  “From Vladimir Kniabrovski.”

  “From Kniabrovski!” Jacques exclaimed, his features lighting up.

  “Sit down, you look tired. Will you have a glass of beer? Or a cup of tea?”

  “No, thank you, nothing at all. Mithoerg arrived during the night. He has come from over there. … So what am I to do? What do you advise me to do? Shall I have a try?”

  Jacques thought it over for some little time before answering.

  “Yes. It’s the only way of finding out now.”

  The other man grew excited.

  “Great! I thought as much. Ignace advised me not to, and so did Chenavon. But you know better. Good work!”

  He stood facing Jacques, his little face radiant with trustfulness.

  “Only—watch out!” Jacques put in severely, lifting an admonitory finger.

  The albino nodded assent.

  “By kindness, that’s the way,” he declared solemnly. And iron determination was discernible in that frail body.

  Jacques was observing him intently.

  “You haven’t been ill, have you, Vanheede?”

  “No, no. Just a bit run down. I feel so uncomfortable, you know, in that big shanty of theirs!” he added with a wry smile.

  “Is Prezel still here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Quilleuf? Tell Quilleuf from me that he talks too much. Just that, eh? He’ll understand.”

  “Oh, Quilleuf! I told him straight: ‘You behave, the lot of you, just as if you were the scum of the earth.’ He tore up Rosengaard’s proclamation without so much as reading it! Everything’s putrid in that group. Yes, everything’s putrid,” he repeated in a hollow, indignant voice, while at the same time an indulgent, angelic smile lit up the girlish lips.

  In a high-pitched sibilant tone he went on: “Saffrio! Tursey! Paterson! Every one of them. And even Suzanne! They stink of rottenness!”

  Jacques shook his head.

  “Josepha, perhaps, but not Suzanne. Josepha, mind you, is a despicable creature. She’ll set you all by the ears.”

  Vanheede had been watching him silently, sliding his doll-like hands over his diminutive knees, bringing into view fantastically pale and fragile wrists.

  “I know. But what is to be done about it? We can hardly consign her to the gutter at this time of day. Would you do that, tell me, now? Is that a reason? She’s a human being, when all’s said and done, and one who isn’t bad through and through. And she has put herself under our protection, after all. Something can be done, surely. By kindness, perhaps, by kindness. How many such creatures haven’t I met in the course of my life!” he added with a sigh. “There’s rottenness everywhere.”

  Again he sighed, shot a veiled glance at Antoine, then, going up to Jacques, he burst out excitedly:

  “That letter of Vladimir Kniabrovski’s is a damn fine letter, let me tell you!”

  “Tell me,” Jacques inquired, “what exactly are his plans for the present?”

  “He’s looking after his health. He has gone back to his wife, to his mother, to his kids. Getting in trim for a new lease of life.”

  Vanheede was pacing up and down in front of the stove; now and then he locked his hands in a sudden access of excitement. As though talking to himself, he added with a rapt expression:

  “One of the pure in heart, that’s what old Kniabrovski is!”

  “Yes, indeed—one of the pure in heart,” Jacques echoed immediately, in the same tone of voice, adding after a pause: “When does he expect to bring out his book?”

  “He doesn’t say.”

  “Ruskinoff tells me it’s a simply amazing work.”

  “How could it be otherwise? A book he wrote from beginning to end in a prison cell!” He took a few steps. “I haven’t brought you his letter today. I’ve lent it to Olga to take to the club. I’ll have it back this evening.” Without looking at Jacques, like a dancing will-o’-the-wisp he flitted about the room, his eyes uplifted, beatifically smiling. “Vladimir tells me he has never been so completely himself as he was in that prison. Alone with his loneliness.” The singing quality in his voice grew more pronounced, though he spoke in a lower tone. “He says that his cell was nice and light, right at the top of the building, and that he used to stand on the boards of his bed, so as to bring his forehead level with the edge of the barred window. He says he used to stand there for hours, thinking, watching the snow-flakes swirling above. He says he could see nothing else, not a roof, not a tree, never anything at all. But as soon as the spring came round and all through the summer, late in the afternoon a ray of sunlight would fall across his fa
ce. He says he used to wait for that moment all day long. You’ll read his letter. He says he once heard a little child crying in the distance. Another time he heard the report of a gun.” Vanheede glanced across at Antoine, who was listening to what he said and could not help following his movements interestedly with his eyes. “But I’ll bring you the letter itself, tomorrow,” he added, returning to his seat.

  “Not tomorrow,” Jacques said; “I shan’t be here tomorrow.”

  Vanheede showed no surprise. But he looked round at Antoine again and rose to his feet after a short pause.

  “Please excuse me. I’m afraid I’ve been intruding; I only wanted to let you know about Vladimir.”

  Jacques, too, had risen.

  “You’re working a bit too hard just now, Vanheede. You should take care of yourself.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Still at Schomberg and Rieth’s?”

  “Why, yes.” He smiled mischievously. “I do the typing. I say: ‘Yes, sir,’ from morn to night and pound the typewriter. What harm can that do? When the day’s over, I am my own self again. Then, I’m free to think: ‘No, sir,’ all night long if I choose—till the next morning.”

  As he spoke, little Vanheede was holding his small head very high and his tousled flaxen forelock gave him the air of drawing himself up still further. He turned slightly, as though addressing Antoine for the first time.

  “I starved and starved for ten years, gentlemen, for the sake of my ideals, and I’m not going to give them up.”

  Then he moved back to Jacques, held out his hand, and a note of distress came into the high-pitched, reedy voice.

  “You are leaving us, perhaps? That’s a shame! It always did me a lot of good, coming here, you know.”

  Deeply moved, Jacques made no answer, but placed his hand affectionately on the albino’s arm. Antoine remembered the man with the scar. Him, too, Jacques had greeted in the same friendly, encouraging, and rather patronizing manner. He seemed really to hold a place of his own in these queer groups of people. They consulted him, sought his approval, and feared his censure; obviously, too, it did their hearts good to be in his company.

  “He’s a regular Thibault!” Antoine thought with satisfaction. But, immediately after, a feeling of sadness came over him. “Jacques will never remain in Paris,” he mused; “he’ll come and live in Switzerland again—that much is quite certain.” In vain did he say to himself: “We’ll write to each other, I’ll come and see him, it won’t be the same now as these last three years.” That sense of disappointment rankled. “But what will he turn his hand to, what sort of life will he lead amongst these people? What use will he make of his talents? Ah, it will be very different from the wonderful career I’d mapped out for him in my dreams!”

  Jacques had caught hold of his friend’s arm and was steering him discreetly towards the door. There Vanheede turned round, took leave of Antoine with a shy nod, and disappeared onto the landing, followed by Jacques.

  Once more, and for the last time, Antoine heard the small indignant voice.

  “Everything’s gone so rotten. They won’t have anyone about them but fawning toadies.”

  X

  ON HIS return, Jacques volunteered no more information about this visitor than he had given about the hooded cyclist they had met in the street. He had poured out a glass of water and was sipping it slowly.

  Antoine, to keep himself in countenance, lit a cigarette, and got up to throw the match into the stove; after a glance out of the window, he returned to his seat.

  The silence lasted a few minutes. Jacques was again pacing up and down the room.

  “Look here, Antoine!” he said abruptly, still walking to and fro. “Do try to understand me a bit! How could I possibly have given three whole years, three years of my life, to that Ecole Normale of theirs?”

  Antoine was startled, but at once assumed an attentive, studiously indulgent air.

  “It would only have been my school-life all over again,” Jacques went on, “with a thin veneer of freedom. Lectures, and lessons, and everlasting essays! And ‘proper feelings’ of respect for all authority. And then the promiscuousness of it all! Every idea peddled round, and torn to tatters by that half-baked mob in the poky dens they call their ‘digs.’ Why, even the jargon they use—’freshies’ and ‘profs’ and ‘grinds’—it’s all in keeping! No, I could never have put up with life under such conditions.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Antoine. I don’t mean … Of course I have a high opinion of them. The teacher’s job is one that can only be carried on in an honourable way, as an act of faith. There’s something attractive, I grant you, in their self-respect, the mental efforts they put forth, and the faithful service they give for so beggarly a reward. Yes, but …

  “No, you can’t really understand,” he muttered after a pause. “It wasn’t only to escape that barrack-like existence, nor from a distaste for all that machine-made education—that wasn’t it. But, just think of the footling life, Antoine!” He broke off, then repeated the word “footling,” with his eyes stubbornly fixed on the floor.

  “When you went to see Jalicourt,” Antoine asked, “I suppose you’d already made up your mind to …?”

  “Certainly not!” Jacques remained standing where he was, with his brows raised, staring at the floor; he was making a genuine attempt to reconstruct the past. “Oh, that month of October! I’d come back from Maisons-Laffitte in a really dreadful state!” He hunched his shoulders as if a heavy load weighed on them, murmuring: “There were too many things that wouldn’t fit together.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember that October.” Antoine was thinking of Rachel.

  “Then, on the last day before the beginning of the term, with that crowning misfortune, the threat of the Ecole looming just ahead, a sort of panic came over me. Just think how strange it all is! At the present moment I realize quite clearly that till my call on Jalicourt, I’d had only a deep-seated fear of what was coming, nothing more. Of course, I’d often felt heartily sick of the whole business and thought of giving up the Ecole, even of running away. But all that was no more than a vague dream. It was only after that evening with Jalicourt that it all took definite shape. You can hardly believe me, eh?” he said, looking up at last and noticing his brother’s bewilderment. “Very well, you shall read the very words I jotted down in my diary that night, on reaching home; it so happens I came across them only the other day.”

  Again he fell to pacing gloomily up and down; the memory of that visit seemed still to upset him, even after so long an interval.

  “When I think of it all …” he began, shaking his head. “But tell me, how did you get in touch with him? Did you write to each other? You went to see him, of course. How did he strike you?”

  Antoine merely made an evasive gesture.

  “Yes,” Jacques said, supposing his brother’s impression of the professor to have been unfavourable, “you can hardly realize what he meant to youngsters of my generation!” And, with a sudden change of mood, he came and sat down opposite Antoine, in an arm-chair beside the stove. “Oh, that Jalicourt!” he exclaimed with an unexpected smile. His voice had softened. He stretched out his legs luxuriously towards the fire. “For years, Antoine, we’d been saying to one another: ‘When I am a pupil of Jalicourt.’ By ‘pupil’ we really meant ‘disciple.’ And whenever some misgiving came over me, as regards the Ecole, I’d comfort myself by thinking: ‘Yes, but there’s always Jalicourt.’ He was the only one whom we thought worth while, you see. We knew all his poems by heart. We retailed all we could pick up about him and his ways, we quoted his witticisms. His colleagues were jealous of him, so we were told. He’d not only succeeded in making the university put up with his lectures—long extempore effusions, full of bold views, digressions, sudden confidences, and broad jokes—but with eccentricities, his dandified get-up, his eyeglass, and even that jaunty soft hat of his. A curious character, whimsical, enthusiastic, a bit of a crank in his way—but what a mind, so wel
l stocked and generous! What was so fine about him was his feeling for the modern world; he was the one man, for us, who had managed to lay his finger on its pulse. I had corresponded with him. I had five letters from him—my most valued treasures. Think of it, five letters, three of which, if not four, are, I still believe, simply masterpieces!

  “Now listen to this. One spring morning at about eleven o’clock, we met him, I and a friend, in the street. How could one ever forget such a thing? He was walking up the Rue Soufflot, with long, springy steps. I can still see him with his coat-tails ballooning behind him, his grey spats, the white hair peeping out under the wide brim of his hat. Very upright, his monocle screwed into position, his Roman nose jutting out like a tall ship’s prow, and the drooping white moustache that brought to mind a Gallic chieftain’s. The profile of an old eagle, ready to strike. A bird of prey, with the spindle-shanks of a heron. And something of an old-school English nobleman, as well. Unforgettable, he was!”

  “Yes, I can see him!” Antoine exclaimed.

  “We shadowed him up to his door. We were spellbound. We visited a dozen shops, trying to get a photo of him!” Jacques jerked back his legs under him with sudden violence. “And now that I think of it, I loathe him!”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s never had the faintest idea of that!” Antoine grinned.

  But Jacques was not listening. Facing the fire, a pensive smile on his lips, he went on speaking in a faraway voice.