The Incorrigible Optimists Club

by Jean-Michel Guenassia

  ‘My dear Michel, if you don’t know the reason for an assassination attempt, for an accidental or inexplicable death, for an unexpected riot or for a good half the lousy tricks committed on this earth, tell yourself that it’s the work of the FBI or the CIA.’

  ‘Surely it’s not possible – even of 50 per cent of them!’

  ‘Let’s not quibble. There are good years and bad years. Don’t worry, the other half is the KGB. With that poor Hemingway, however, I’m afraid he blew his own brains out. Even though they might have wanted to. For once, they’re innocent.’

  ‘So why does she say that?’

  Sacha took out the sheets from the water, shook them and hung them from taut wires with clothes-pegs.

  ‘It’s a logical and reassuring explanation for events that are incomprehensible and worrying. It’s like our own disbelief when confronted with death. We find it hard to accept every time. The fact that a death might not be due to natural causes is comforting. And we can say whatever we like, in a knowing way, without fear of being contradicted. Plots and conspiracies are more exciting than reality. Bergier and Pauwels have made their money from it. She gets carried away, it’s her age.’

  ‘Thank you, Sacha. I’m going to let you get on with your work.’

  ‘What’s bothering you, Michel?’

  ‘I’ve bored you enough with my stories.’

  ‘Don’t take offence. After all, there’s nothing to be ashamed of about liking Le Matin des magiciens. She wants to dream and to escape from the humdrum.’

  ‘You’re right. Her favourite author is Arthur Rimbaud.’

  ‘Michel, think about everything she has told you. What she likes is not Rimbaud, it’s the poet. It’s not poetry, it’s the rebel. It’s escape. Be idealistic and rebellious and she will look at you in a different light. It’s quite common among young women who daydream. Make the most of it: later on, they change. One day they want children, a house, a husband, holidays by the sea and household appliances. That’s what kills poetry.’

  ‘What can I do? I’ve never written any poetry. Sure, I’m a bit of a rebel, but it’s not very obvious.’

  ‘I’m going to think about it. You try too.’

  9

  That’s how vocations are born. I’m convinced that Rimbaud’s biographers are mistaken about the roots of his genius. Perhaps he had a secret. A girl from Charleville high society whom he encountered during Sunday mass at Saint-Rémi, to whom he was unable to speak and whom he wanted to impress by letting her see his poems, hidden in a missal. Perhaps this silly little goose shrugged her shoulders and crumpled into a ball the page covered in his neat, slanting handwriting. I struggled away at clumsy alexandrines. Poetry is complicated. You think that it comes while you’re gazing at the moon, beside the roar of the ocean, with your nose in the air, in a spontaneous way – a sort of torrent that sweeps over the turmoil of the words and changes them into allegories and feelings. But it’s so unnatural. You have to slave away like a carpenter with a plane on a piece of wood. Having sweated and suffered until dawn, you produce four feeble lines.

  I found myself sitting on the bench at the Balto writing pages and pages. Pages and pages is metaphorical, for I felt completely uninspired. I spent hours staring at a blank page on which I had written ‘Poem No. 1’. I had the first two lines. They began:

  Today is a beautiful day

  The sun shines and the lights play…

  I hesitated: … play… play… Apart from the rhyme, which I thought was pretty, I wondered what the sun could do next. I thought that there might be some fleeting clouds in the sky and a slight wind. I stopped. It sounded like the weather forecast. I gave up on the clouds and the breeze. The skies were empty. Rimbaud could sleep in peace.

  The Balto was not a suitable place for poetic creativity. I was disturbed by friends who came and shook me by the hand and asked me how I was feeling today and whether I was ready for a game of baby-foot or chess. I adopted the attitude of someone who was being disturbed while doing important work.

  ‘It’s kind of you, but not today.’

  I was also confronted with the permanent spectacle of Pavel Cibulka, who suffered from logorrhoea and who took up three tables with his monumental opus. He had spent his afternoons at the Balto ever since I first started coming to the Club. In the evenings he was a nightwatchman at a large hotel, where his refined manners and polyglot talents were appreciated. He had been labouring over this vast work for several years. In spite of the vicissitudes and vagaries of fate, he carried on with his mission to general indifference.

  ‘It’s the common lot of exceptional people who have within them that which is beyond them, but which they must complete and which will assure their fame for ever in the history of the human species,’ he explained to me one day when I asked him whether it was worthwhile going to so much trouble for such poor rewards. ‘With your parochial mentality, Kafka would have spent his time playing billiards instead of working and Van Gogh would have been an ironmonger.’

  Three years previously, he told me, Kessel, wearing a gloomy expression, had returned the manuscript to him, tied up with string.

  ‘I told you, Pavel. No publisher these days will agree to read a book that is handwritten, especially one that is so bulky. You should type it out.’

  ‘It’s a considerable amount of work. I’m not a typist – I type with two fingers. It would take me ages.’

  ‘You could start work on it again. You’ve still got the Remington I gave you.’

  ‘The ribbon’s playing up. It only writes in red.’

  ‘You must buy another one.’

  Kessel put his hand in his coat and took out his wallet.

  ‘Thank you, Jef. At the moment I can afford to buy myself two or three typewriter ribbons.’

  Over three years, Pavel transcribed the pages one by one. He used the little finger of his left hand and the middle finger of his right hand. The pages were densely written. He pressed on doggedly. Every page written in his diplomat’s handwriting produced a sheet and a half in Garamond type. In its entirety, the work amounted to two thousand one hundred and thirty-four pages, not including the contents, or the index, or the bibliographical references, which amounted to one hundred pages.

  ‘That’s it. I’ve finished.’

  Pavel heaved a sigh of relief and gazed at the mountain of manuscript pages that lay piled up in front of him. He contemplated his life’s work, which was going to make his name all over the world. We took his word for it. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: Diplomacy and Revolution had been published in Czech after the war and translated into Russian. Pavel had been fortunate to have had access to secret and unknown archives when he did his internship at the Czech embassy in Moscow, and British and American academics quoted his book as the definitive source on this subject. At that point, it was a slab of one thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven crammed pages. But later Pavel had gone back to his text, which he considered incomplete, and had expanded it to include aspects that he had suppressed so as not to upset the Soviets.

  Pavel reminded us just how critical this treaty was: more important than that of Versailles, Vienna, or indeed any other in the history of the planet. Kessel and Sartre had tried it on some publishers in Paris. Between them, they knew them all. But their recommendation proved to be insufficient. The responses were polite and courteous. Some were friendly. The publishing world recognized the importance of the work and its exceptional documentation, but their interest always waned eventually. Igor maintained that a historical work was not publishable if it was over a thousand pages.

  ‘Especially on a subject for which the entire world couldn’t give a damn,’ Tomasz pointed out when Pavel was not there.

  After superhuman efforts, endless dilemmas, pangs of conscience, regrets and years of constant work, Pavel had cut it drastically. There were now only one thousand two hundred and thirty-two pages that could not be reduced. ‘It’s not possible to make it any shorter. I’ve taken out
the technical details, the legal facts, the reports and the diplomatic telegrams. I’ve retained the historical and social context, the basic political and military issues. I’m down to the skeleton. Any further, and it becomes an historical operetta. They either take it or leave it.’

  They left it. They advised him to publish it first in English. If it went down well in the United States, there would be no further problem. Pavel set about translating it into English. He was still waiting for a reply from a young publisher to whom Kessel had given the manuscript, but you sensed that he no longer had the heart for it. But when we felt bored, or the conversation lagged, we only had to ask him how things were going and the machine would start up again. He was unstoppable.

  ‘Are you any further forward?’ I asked him.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to read it and give me your opinion?’

  I hesitated to confess to him that I had to tackle Le Matin des magiciens, fourteen issues of Planète and On the Road.

  ‘Listen, Pavel. I have to prepare for the bac. It’s a lot of work. I’ll read it during the holidays.’

  ‘What are you doing just now? Are you working for your bac?’

  ‘It’s different… I’m writing an essay on poetry.’

  ‘A talk?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘In your final year, you have the First World War and the Russian revolution on the syllabus.’

  ‘It’s so huge.’

  ‘All you have to do is suggest a talk on the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.’

  He pushed the slab of one thousand, two hundred and something pages towards me.

  ‘That will help you revise. You’ll have to be careful, Michel, this is the only copy I’ve got.’

  ‘Imagine if I were to lose it, if there were a fire at home or a flood. You’d never forgive me. I’ll read it here. I promise you.’

  Pavel was over the moon. At last, his talent had been recognized. The young publisher had written to him. His work had attracted his attention. He wished to meet him as soon as possible to discuss matters with him. Pavel had just telephoned from the Balto. An unusually pleasant secretary had made an appointment with him for that same day. Such a speedy meeting was unheard of. We were happy for him. He bought a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate the occasion. He was given masses of advice: to be firm about the terms and not show that he was waiting for this outcome like the arrival of the messiah.

  I had given up wondering what the sun did and was planning to embark on another subject, such as the springtime with its dipping swallows or the blazing summer with its golden wheat and its red poppies, when I saw Pavel coming back, with a distraught expression on his face. He looked as though he were sleepwalking. He threw himself down on the bench, which creaked beneath his weight.

  ‘Would you like a beer, Pavel?’

  ‘I’d love one.’

  I passed the order to Jacky. Pavel remained prostrate. I didn’t dare question him about the disaster that was written all over his face. Jacky placed the beers on the table. Pavel drank his half in one gulp and, since he was thirsty, he downed my shandy. He gave a small burp.

  ‘Didn’t he like it?’

  ‘On the contrary. He was engrossed by it and he congratulated me. He’d never read a work of this magnitude.’

  ‘Where’s the problem?’

  ‘The 1914 war. What sells is the Algerian war.’

  ‘Why did he send you that letter?’

  ‘Because of Roman Stachkov.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘If you’d read my book, you’d know.’

  ‘Pavel, please.’

  ‘It takes place in late November 1917. A grim period. At the beginning of the month, the Bolsheviks have succeeded in their takeover bid and have overthrown Kerensky’s government. They’re holding on to power by a thread. For the revolution to succeed, they’re obliged to sign a peace treaty with the Germans, whatever price they may have to pay. Trotsky is in charge. He asks for talks to begin. For the Germans, it’s an opportunity to bring the troops that are bogged down on the Russian front back home so that they can be redeployed on the western front – crucial reinforcements necessary for them to win the war. The negotiations are due to open at Brest-Litovsk, where the German headquarters are based. The Russian delegation, led by Kamenev, consists of a symbolic cross section of soldiers, women and members of the proletariat. At the railway station, as they are about to leave, Kamenev realizes that there are no peasants, even though they represent 80 per cent of the Russian population. Since the Bolshevik government wants to give the impression that the entire population is behind it, they set off in search of a peasant. In deserted and snowbound Petrograd, they come across an elderly, bearded peasant, with straggly hair and dubious-looking clothing, who is in the process of eating a smoked herring with his greasy fingers. They drag him into the delegation as the representative of the revolutionary peasantry. Roman Stachkov, that’s his name, stands out at the diplomats’ banquets because of his country-bumpkin manners, his exuberance and his misplaced cheerfulness. He’s not used to champagne and food in abundance. He eats with his fingers, wipes his mouth with the tablecloth, thumps the dreaded General Max von Hoffman on the shoulder and cheers on the impassive Prince Ernst von Hohenlohe when he stuffs the silver cutlery inside his military uniform. To begin with, the Germans believe he is a top-level fraudster, using Machiavellian machinations to extract secrets from them. They take two months to realize that he’s just a wild fellow from a village. The funniest thing is that he extorts money from Kamenev by threatening to leave. His utter ignorance of what was at stake in the war did not prevent him from going down in history as one of the negotiators of this treaty. He wants me to write his story.’

  ‘He’s right. It would make an amazing book.’

  ‘Do you reckon?’

  ‘If you wrote this book, you could publish the other one afterwards.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘I’m sure of it. What did you say to him?’

  ‘To go fuck himself!’

  10

  We would see each other after lessons. To begin with, whoever came out first would go and collect the other. She avoided the area around Henri-IV in case she ran into her brother. She had advised me not to speak to him under any circumstances and not to be taken in by his friendly manner, which concealed dreadful hypocrisy. As for me, I kept my distance from the Fénélon so as to avoid the sidelong glances and the sniggering. We met halfway, at the Viennese cake shop on rue de l’Ecole-de-Médecine. We had a café crème and talked for two hours in front of an apple strudel. When the weather was nice, we wandered up and down boulevard Saint-Germain or beside the river. For reasons unknown, she refused to give me her phone number, but I got hold of it through directory enquiries. When I suggested ringing her, she begged me never to call her at home. It was complicated, she said. I didn’t ask why. When Camille stated: ‘It’s complicated’, you had to accept it and not ask any questions, just accept that there was an insurmountable and inexplicable obstacle. I thought that her parents must be stern, with old-fashioned morals. I imagined an Irish mother, strict and puritanical, a stickler for principles; it’s a slightly old-fashioned notion, but then the Victorian novel would not have existed had the education of young girls not been a problem. I was still bogged down in my naivety and my illusions.

  When she could, that is to say when she was on her own, she would ring me at home. As usual, Juliette rushed to answer the phone, so it wasn’t long before they got to know one another. Sometimes she talked more to Juliette than she did to me. Occasionally, Camille would cut short the conversation suddenly: ‘I must go now!’ and hang up. I had to endure daily interrogations from Juliette, who wanted to know what she was like, what we did, where we went. Since I evaded these questions, she asked Camille. She wanted to meet her. I opposed the suggestion vehemently.

  Apart from the evenings, it was complicated for us to see one another. Thursdays were difficult: there was
always a brother hanging about and no way around this. Saturdays were very complicated. Sundays were impossible. Based on various crosschecks, deductions and suppositions, as well as the authoritative opinions of Leonid and Sacha, she came from a happy, close and intrusive family. The great inconvenience of united families is that the presence of all of them is required as proof of collective happiness.

  One afternoon, we were walking side by side along rue Bonaparte when she dived between two cars, disappearing behind them in a flash. I noticed three young men walking past us. I recognized her elder brother whom I had met at the Planète conference. The youngest one stared at me with a questioning look. I seemed to have seen him before at Henri-IV. They went on their way, chatting. Camille reappeared, looking agitated.

  ‘Did they see me?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Did they see you?’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘If they see us together, there’ll be one hell of a fuss.’

  I was unsettled by this attitude, but it didn’t bother Sacha: ‘You shouldn’t worry. Has she told you she doesn’t want to see you again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, you’re still alive. You’ll have to sort it out. Relationships between men and women are destined to be complicated. Show me your efforts.’

  I took a sheet of paper out of my pocket and gave it to him. He read it in three seconds.

  ‘Is that what you call a poem?’

  ‘I did warn you.’

  ‘You had no talent for drawing either. Your future in the arts seems to me to be in jeopardy.’

  ‘And what if I borrowed the words of a great poet?’

  ‘If she recognizes it, she may not be very pleased and you would look like an idiot. I’ve something better to suggest.’

  This was how Sacha developed the strategy of the poems. He suggested that he should provide me with some, which I could recite to Camille. I wouldn’t even have to lie and say that I was the author. The less I talked about them, the better it would be. Let her imagination roam. Give no explanation. An artist doesn’t have to justify himself.