“Shall I tell you all about it? Well, it was after dinner, one night, I suddenly made up my mind to go and call on him. To explain, well, everything to him. So off I went, on the spur of the moment, without giving the matter a second thought. By nine o’clock I was ringing his bell, in the Place du Pantheon. You know the house, don’t you? A dark entrance-hall, a stupid-looking Breton maid, the dining-room, the rustle of a vanishing skirt. The table had been cleared, but there was a work-basket left behind, with clothes to be darned in it. A smell of food, of pipe smoke, a stuffy heat. The door opened. There was Jalicourt. Not a thing to remind one of the old eagle of the Rue Soufflot, or of the writer of those marvellous letters. Nothing of the poet, or the lofty thinker! Or any Jalicourt we knew. Nothing whatever. A round-shouldered Jalicourt, minus the eyeglass, an old pea-jacket mottled with dandruff, a dead pipe, a peevish mouth. He must have been quietly snoring, digesting his boiled cabbage, with his big nose nodding over a stove. I certainly shouldn’t have been admitted, if the maid had known her job. Well, he’d been caught napping, taken off his guard, and had to see it through. He showed me into his study.
“I was too excited to think. I just blurted out what I had come to say. ‘I’ve come to ask you, sir,’ and so forth. He pulled himself together, came to life, more or less, and I got a glimpse of the old eagle again. lie put up his eyeglass and motioned me to a seat. There was a touch of the old peer in his manner. ‘So you want my advice?’ he asked ir a surprised tone. As if he meant: ‘Have you no one else to apply to?’ True enough. I’d never thought of that. You see, Antoine, it’s not your fault, but it was very seldom I could bring myself to follow your advice—or anyone else’s, for that matter. I preferred to steer my own course; I’m built that way. My answer to Jalicourt was to that effect. His attentiveness led me on. I told him straight out: ‘I want to be a novelist, a great novelist!’ I had to tell him; no use beating about the bush. He never turned a hair. I went on pouring my heart out, I explained to him, well, everything, in fact. That I was conscious of a store of energy within me, of a deep-seated, vital impulse that was my very own, personal, unique! That for years past every step forward that I made in ‘culture’ had always been made at the expense of what was best in me, that vital force. That I had developed an intense dislike for study, for schools, and learning, for pedantry and idle chatter, and that this aversion had all the violence of an instinct of self-defence, of self-preservation! Yes, I’d taken the bit between my teeth! I said to him: ‘All that is weighing on me, sir; it’s stifling me, and it’s warping all my natural impulses!’ ”
As he spoke Jacques’s expression was constantly changing; at one moment his eyes were obdurate, smouldering with passion, then suddenly the hardness would go out of them; they grew tender, wistful, almost appealing.
“Antoine!” he cried. “It’s true, every word of it, you know.”
“I quite realize that, old man.”
“But don’t imagine that there’s pride behind it,” Jacques went on. “I’ve no wish to be above the rest, not a trace of what most people call ambition. You’ve only got to look at the way I’m living. And yet, Antoine, believe me, I’ve been perfectly happy here!”
After a few seconds, Antoine spoke again.
“Well, what happened next? What was his answer?”
“Wait a bit. He made no answer, so far as I can remember. Ah, yes, in the end, I came out with some lines from a poem I’d begun. It was called ‘The Spring.’ A sort of prose-poem, it was. Awful nonsense, really!” he added, with a blush. “I’d written that I aspired ‘to bend above myself as one bends over a flowing spring,’ and so forth. ‘To draw aside the tall grass and peer unhindered into the crystal depths.’ There he stopped me. ‘A pretty conceit.’ That’s all he had to say! The crabbed old pedant! I tried to catch his eye. But he would not look at me; he kept on fiddling with his signet-ring.”
“I can quite picture him!” Antoine said.
“Then he embarked on a regular lecture. ‘It doesn’t do to be too scornful of the beaten track. The advantages, indeed the mental agility, one derives from being subjected to discipline,’ and so forth. Oh, he was just like the rest of them. He hadn’t understood a thing, not a thing! All he could do was to offer a few well-worn platitudes. I was furious with myself for coming, for having laid bare my heart to him! He kept on for some time in the same strain. The one thing he seemed concerned with was to pigeonhole me neatly. He’d say, for instance: ‘You are the type of person who … Young fellows of your age … You might be classed among those characters whom …’ Finally, I lost my temper. ‘I loathe classifications and I hate the people who make them. Under the pretext of classifying you, they maim you, whittle you down. By the time you’re out of their clutches you’re no more than a mutilated fragment of yourself—a cripple.’ He kept on smiling; he seemed quite ready to take any amount of punishment! Then I began to shout at him. ‘Yes, sir, I hate professors! That’s the reason I came to see you, and none of the others.’ He was still smiling, as though I’d flattered him. To make himself agreeable, he asked me a few questions. Maddening questions! He wanted to know what I had done. ‘Nothing!’ What I intended to do. ‘Everything!’ The old humbug hadn’t even the pluck to laugh me down. He was much too frightened of being sized up by one of the rising generation. For that was his obsession: what the coming generation thought of him. From the time I’d crossed his threshold, the only thought at the back of his mind was for the book he was writing, My Experiences. (It must have been published, by now, but I shall never read it.) He was in a blue funk at the idea his book wouldn’t be up to the mark, and, whenever a youngster like myself crossed his path, he would hark back to that anxiety of his: ‘I wonder what this young fellow will think of my work?’ ”
“Poor devil!” Antoine exclaimed.
“Oh, yes, I don’t deny it; he was really to be pitied. Still, I hadn’t come there just to have a view of his anxieties. I was still hankering after the Jalicourt of my dreams. Under any of his avatars: the poet, the philosopher, and so on—any of them except the one he was showing me just then. Finally I got up to leave. It was a grotesque performance. He followed me out, keeping up his patter. ‘So difficult to advise the younger generation … No hard-and-fast rules of life … Every man must blaze his own trail,’ and so forth. I walked in front, without saying a word; my nerves were on edge, as you may well imagine! The drawing-room, then the dining-room, then the hall. I opened the door myself, in the dark, stumbling over his rubbishy antiques; I hardly left him time to find the electric switches.”
Antoine could not help smiling; well did he recall the arrangement of the flat—the “period” furniture, the upholstered chairs, the bric-a-brac. But Jacques had not finished yet; a look of something like alarm came over his face.
“Then—wait a bit!—I can’t quite remember how it happened. Perhaps it dawned on him why I was bolting like that. I heard his raucous voice behind me in the hall. ‘What more do you want me to say? Can’t you see I’m played out, done for?’ I turned round, couldn’t believe my ears. What a pitiful figure he cut just then! He kept on repeating: ‘Played out … done for! And my whole life wasted!’ I began to protest. Yes, I meant it; I’d stopped being annoyed with him. But he wouldn’t give in. ‘I’ve done nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. And I’m the only one who knows that.’ And as I went on protesting, rather clumsily, he flew into a sort of rage. ‘What on earth is it that fools you all? My books? Zero for them! I’ve put nothing into them, not a scrap of what I might have. Well, then, what’s left? My degrees? My lectures? The Academy? What’s left, I ask you? This thing?’ He caught hold of the lapel of his coat, with the Legion of Honour rosette on it, and was shaking it pettishly. ‘This thing, I ask you? This “riband to stick in my coat”?’ ”
Carried away by his reminiscences, Jacques had risen from his seat, and was acting out the scene with ever-increasing vehemence. And Antoine was put in mind of the Jalicourt he had had a glimpse of, in th
e same setting, holding himself erect, preening himself, in his brightly lit room.
“All of a sudden he calmed down,” Jacques went on. “I fancy he was afraid of being overheard. He opened a door and showed me into a sort of pantry that smelled of oranges and beeswax. His lips were drawn back in a derisive grin, but his expression was hard and bitter, and his eye bloodshot behind the monocle. He was leaning against a shelf on which were some glasses and a fruit-dish. It was a marvel how he managed not to knock anything over. All that happened three years ago, but the tone of his voice and his words are still ringing in my ears.
“He began talking, endlessly, in a low, monotonous voice. ‘Listen! I’m going to tell you the whole truth, nothing but the truth. At your age, I too … I was a trifle older, perhaps; I’d just graduated from the Ecole. And I too felt myself called to be a novelist. I too had that vital energy which needs freedom if it is to realize its full potentialities. And I too felt intuitively that I was taking the wrong road. Just for a moment. And I too had the notion of asking an older man’s advice. Only I applied to a novelist. Guess who it was! No, you’d never understand, you can’t conceive what that man stood for in the minds of the younger generation, in 1880. I called on him at his house, he let me ramble on, watching me with his gimlet eyes, and fumbling with his beard. He was in a hurry—he always was in a hurry’—and he got up without hearing me out. Oh, there was no hesitation, in his case! He said to me, with that peculiar lisp he had that turned the s’s into f’s: “There’f only one royal road for the would-be novelift, and that’f journalifm!” Yes that’s what he told me. Well, I left, no wiser than I’d come, my young friend—like the fool I was! I went back to my manuals, to my tutors, to my fellow-students, to the examination-rooms, the “advanced” reviews, the debating-societies, and all the rest of it. With a fine future before me. A fine future, indeed!’ Bang! Jalicourt’s hand crashed on my shoulder. Never shall I forget his eye, that Cyclops eye blazing behind the monocle. He had drawn himself up to his full height, he spluttered in my face. ‘What’s it you want of me, my boy? A piece of advice? Well, here it is, but beware of it! Drop your books, and follow your instincts! Here’s a home-truth for you, my friend; if there’s a spark of genius in your make-up, your only way of making something of yourself is from within, under the stress of your natural impulses. Perhaps, in your case, it’s still not too late. Waste no time about it. Go out and live. Anywhere, anyhow! You’re a boy of twenty, you have eyes and legs, haven’t you? Trust Jalicourt. Join the staff of a newspaper. Keep on the lookout for “stories.” Do you hear me? I know what I’m talking about. “Stories.” The plunge into the pauper’s grave! Nothing else will rub the cobwebs off you. Go at it, with all you’ve got, morning, noon, and night; mind you don’t miss a single accident, a single suicide, or scandal in high life, or murder in a brothel! Keep your eyes wide open; notice everything that the tide of civilization sweeps along with it—the good, the bad, the unsuspected, the unimagined! And after that, perhaps, you may venture to say something about men, about society, about yourself!’
“Believe me, Antoine, at that moment I wasn’t just looking at him, I was devouring him with my eyes, thrilled through and through. Only, a moment later, all was over. Without saying a word, he opened the door and good as pushed me out, across the entrance-hall, onto the landing. I’ve never been able to make out why he did it. Had he checked himself deliberately? Was he sorry he had let himself go like that? Was he afraid I might tell people about it? I can still see that lanky jaw of his quivering with emotion. He kept on mumbling in a low voice: ‘Go away! Go away! Go back to your libraries, sir!’
“The door was slammed in my face. A fat lot I cared! Ah, you should have seen me racing down the four flights of stairs and out into the street, kicking up my heels in the darkness, like a colt just turned out to grass!”
Emotion had taken away his breath; he poured out another glass of water and drank it at a gulp. As he set down the glass with an unsteady hand, it jarred against the water-jug. In the long silence, the thin, crystalline sound seemed to linger on interminably.
Hardly less overwrought than his brother, Antoine was trying to piece together the events that had led up to Jacques’s flight. There were many gaps still to be filled in. He would have liked to elicit a few confidences as regards Giuseppe’s emotional dilemma. But that was a delicate subject. “Too many irreconcilable things,” Jacques had said just now, with a sigh. That was all he had to go on; but Jacques’s stubborn reticence showed how large a part those sentimental entanglements had played in his decision to run away. Antoine wondered how far, at the present time, his heart was still preoccupied with them.
He endeavoured roughly to muster the facts. In October, then, Jacques had come back from Maisons. At that moment, of what nature were his relations with Gise, his meetings with Jenny? Had he tried to break off? Or entered into commitments impossible to fulfill? Antoine pictured his brother in Paris, lacking a clearly defined course of study, alone and far too free, turning the unsolvable problem over and over in his mind. He must have been living in a precarious state of mingled rapture and depression; with nothing to look forward to but the beginning of the term and the cloistered routine of the Ecole Normale, the mere thought of which must have sickened him. Then, suddenly, his visit to Jalicourt had shown him a way out of it all, a bright rift in the drab horizon of his future. How he must have exulted in that prospect of escape from an impossible situation and of a new, adventurous existence, living his own life! Yes, Antoine mused, that accounts for the fact not only that Jacques left us, but that for three whole years he persisted in that silence of the tomb. He was embarking on a new life and, to achieve this, to blot out the past entirely, he needed to be forgotten, dead to his family and friends.
But he could not help remembering how Jacques had taken advantage of his trip to Le Havre, had not waited even one day to see him and talk things over. His resentment was stirring again, but he fought it down, subdued his grievances, and made an effort to renew the conversation, to lead his brother to the sequel.
“So that was it,” he remarked. “And it was the next day that you …?” He paused.
Jacques had sat down again by the stove, resting his elbows on his knees, his shoulders hunched and his head bent low; he was whistling.
Now he looked up.
“Yes, the next day.” Then, in a reluctant tone he added: “Immediately after the scene with …”
The scene with their father, of course, the scene at the Palazzo Seregno! Antoine had forgotten that.
“Father never breathed a word of it to me,” he added quickly.
Jacques looked surprised. Nevertheless, he averted his gaze, making a vague gesture as if to imply: “Oh, let it go! I haven’t the heart to speak of that again.”
Antoine was thinking: “Of course that accounts for his not waiting till I came back from Le Havre,” and felt a certain consolation in the thought.
Jacques had resumed his meditative attitude, and started whistling to himself again. His eyebrows twitched nervously. Despite his efforts to blot it out, that tragic scene had flashed across his memory once more. Father and son had been left alone together in the dining-room, just after lunch; M. Thibault had asked some question about the beginning of the term at the Ecole Normale, and Jacques had bluntly told his father he had decided not to enter. An altercation had followed, of ever-increasing violence. M. Thibault had pounded on the table with his fist. At last Jacques had thrown discretion to the winds and in an unaccountable fit of madness had blurted out Jenny’s name—as a direct challenge to his father. By now he had lost his head completely, answering threats with counter-threats and launching out into a series of irrevocable declarations. And then had come that tragic climax when, now he had burned his boats and rendered all compromise impossible, he had uttered that last cry of rebellion and despair, had rushed out of the room, shouting: “I’ll go and kill myself!”
The picture evoked was so clear-cut, so poi
gnant, that he jumped up as if he had been stung. Antoine had just time to catch a glint of madness in his brother’s eyes; but Jacques quickly pulled himself together.
“It’s past four,” he said; “I must be off, if I’m to attend to that business of mine.” He was already putting on his overcoat; he seemed impatient to get away. “You’ll stay here, won’t you? I shall be back before five. My bag won’t take long to pack. We can dine at the station restaurant; that will be simplest.” He had laid on the table some files stuffed with papers of various shapes and sizes. “Here,” he said, “dip into these, if you feel inclined to. They’re magazine articles, short stories. The least worthless of the things I’ve written these last few years.”
He was already outside the door when, turning round awkwardly, he threw out in a detached manner: “By the way, you haven’t told me anything about—about Daniel?”
Antoine had the impression his brother had been going to say: “about the Fontanins.”
“Daniel? Why, just think, we’ve become great friends! After you went away, I found him so loyal, so devoted, so affectionate!”
To cover up his confusion, Jacques feigned extreme astonishment; Antoine made as if he were taken in by it.
“That’s a surprise now, isn’t it!” he laughed. “Of course he and I are pretty different, but I’ve come to accept his attitude to life; it may very well be justifiable in so gifted an artist. You know, his success exceeds all our expectations! His private show at Ludwigson’s in 1911 brought him right into the limelight. He could sell any number of pictures if he chose; only he paints so few. We are very unlike each other—or, rather, we were unlike,” he amended, pleased to grasp an opportunity for putting in a few words about himself, and showing Jacques that the portrait of Umberto’s character no longer fitted him. “I’ve become much less rigid in my way of looking at things, you see. I’m inclined to think that one needn’t …”
The Thibaults Page 78