For Two Thousand Years

by Mihail Sebastian

  The Coupole isn’t a café, it’s a continent, and Maurice isn’t an onlooker, he’s an explorer. He observes it all, down to the finest detail, understands the show, organizes it. He’s keenly perceptive. Among an apparently ordinary group, his eye discovers every possible passion. From the smallest clues under the indifferent light of the electric globe-lamps, a bare hint is enough for him to penetrate the private life of a café patron, or comedies or disasters hidden behind an expressionless smile. An adulteress, an unhappy lover, a young first-time pederast, an Anglo-Saxon blonde, still chaste and dazzled by the lights of Paris, a youthful adventurer, a grey-haired cynic, a dark-haired femme fatale looking for her ethereal other half …

  Anybody might be a hero, every gesture the beginning of a drama. From our table, Maurice patiently watches the film unspool and notes decisive moments. Nothing in this immense hall, nobody in this agitated throng, escapes his vigilance. The spectacle is complex, but ordered. A smile from the third table to the left of the pillar may not reach its target, but it won’t be lost on Maurice, who will follow its trajectory and discover, in the far corner, the one for whom it was intended.

  Maurice knows the geography of the Coupole because he has constructed it. A veteran drinker of 1.25-franc glasses of beer, he has also bought an observation post from where he deciphers nightly the mysteries of the quarter and its inhabitants. For Maurice, this population is divisible into couples, families and social groups, to the point where from one table to the next, from booth to booth, from the first floor to the ground floor to the street, there is an entire chain of networks and connections, giving unity, order and logic to a world spinning dizzyingly with colours, lights and voices.

  Any adventures that have gone on here, Maurice has known about. Some only guessed at, others given away by an exclamation or a pallor, others, in the end, tracked down methodically from day to day, from happening to happening. This fellow has one great passion, which he has cultivated: curiosity.

  (Curiosity also led him into medicine, as I don’t know what could have made him a doctor except his taste for provoking and hearing confessions.)

  Observing gives him far greater pleasure than living does. Nothing that happens to him personally interests him except as an extra experience. He doesn’t require his own life to be more than just another spectacle, similar to that vast Coupole through which people come and go, in a vain race that is only redeemed by the secret pleasure of watching and comprehending.

  Of the several Maurice Burets I know (as this man has enough raw material for four or five successful characters), the most interesting is the Maurice Buret of the Coupole, with his ruffled grey conventional clothing, a hat that’s neither new nor old, dress spats of an unremarkable sort. He has the drab appearance of any passer-by, lost in the crowd, neither handsome nor ugly, with nothing rough, insolent or seductive in his aspect, giving him the right to always stroll through life without anybody turning their head when he passes, a man among a thousand, a hundred thousand, settled in front of a glass, past which a curtain is being raised to reveal a theatre of accidental heroes, playing before this watchful and faithless witness.

  ‘See that brooding brunette over by the mirror?’ he asked me about two weeks ago. ‘What a goose she looks. I’d be surprised if she didn’t hate men and love women. Either she’s waiting for a lover or seeking one. Now look what a dramatic face she’s making.’

  A couple of evenings ago, Maurice completed his ‘dossier’ of observations.

  ‘The brooding brunette is definitely looking for a match. How about the blonde on the right? No, not the one at the big table. Look closer, the second, the third, yes, the third on the right. Pretty, isn’t she? They smiled at each other a couple of times this evening. You know, they wouldn’t make a bad couple.’

  The study continued over the following evenings. The small blonde became known by Maurice – I don’t know why – as ‘blonde Aline’, while the exchange of smiles and invitations between the two tables progressed visibly. I doubted the outcome, however. The ‘moody brunette’ was on her own and there was no difficulty there, but ‘Aline’ was always with a large party of young men and women.

  ‘You’re wrong, Maurice. You invent novels everywhere. You have the soul of a detective.’

  ‘I could be wrong. I still maintain they’re a potential couple, and there’s a chance they’ll get together.’

  For a few days I didn’t make it to the Coupole. (I was working at the time on some plans for the master and sent them on to Bucharest. It really seems that in summer work might start at Le Havre for Rice Operations. It’s not final, but it is likely.) So for a while I didn’t make it to Montparnasse. Last night, entering the Coupole, the first thing I noticed, not without a genuine jolt, was the two girls – ‘moody brunette’ and ‘blonde Aline’ – talking on their own at a table, the former sombre and passionate, the latter submissive, and clearly excited.

  Maurice, in his usual seat, savoured his victory with modesty, but not without a vague smile of triumph. I think he felt a kind of paternal sentiment, an authorial pride concerning the romantic couple, which he had predicted from the earliest hints.

  ‘You’re happy, and proud of yourself!’

  ‘“Happy” is putting it too strongly. I’m pleased my findings have been confirmed. Success in the laboratory, if you will.’

  I’ve no desire for psychological studies. And, if I had, the example of Maurice Buret would cure me once and for all.

  The only unmistakable quality I can recognize in people is indifference, which constitutes for me the height of civility as well as a guarantee of security and peace. I’ve never despaired about the so-called tragedy of one person never being able to know another or the thought that two people can spend a lifetime together without one ever knowing what is really going on deep in the soul of the other. Far from being painful to me, the thought of the impenetrable solitude our nature destines us to cheers me up. It satisfies in me an old nostalgia for a healthy, reliable and certain ignorance, the only durable thing in a world where truth is provisional and uncertain. To honestly not know is a first step towards salvation. I say this without irony, with a grain of exaggeration at most, precisely to disapprove more strongly of Maurice’s psychological experiments.

  *

  Ça fait toujours une petite expérience, says Maurice Buret of his most recent success at the Coupole. Experiences, always experiences, only experiences. Life’s only merit for this fellow is that it is observable. He always has with him an invisible register, in which he carefully notes a multitude of systematic conclusions. Each person has his file, every feeling has its chapter. He calls this exercise du jardinage, ‘tending the garden’, and he is well equipped.

  ‘You’re a Cartesian, my dear Maurice, one of the most unfortunate cases.’

  ‘Oh? I didn’t know that. I read Descartes at school, but I’ve forgotten him.’

  I read him a few lines from Discours de la Méthode. He listens attentively.

  ‘Indeed, that does fit me. But Descartes isn’t my master. Too abstract. Anecdotes are what interests me, and only truths conveyable through anecdotes. I’m not a philosopher. I’m just curious. At most – and I’m saying this just to please you – at most I’m a psychologist.’

  I see him occasionally. He may be missing for two or three weeks, then turn up one morning, out of nowhere, with a vast harvest of events, discoveries and sensations. He operates on a number of fronts, which are not allowed to mingle. He lives among a number of groups of people which he does not mix, maintains several friendships which he carefully kee
ps separate from one another, and cultivates a number of well-guarded love affairs.

  ‘You see, my good friend, life would be impossible if it weren’t organized properly. I have only one bed and there are a thousand beautiful women, I have only one telephone number and there are a thousand interesting conversations. Much discretion is required in order to make the correct choice, to move ahead quickly and with little risk.’

  Without doubt, Maurice Buret has enough love affairs for three lives. He lives all three at once and keeps close tabs on them. Firstly there’s his very serious life at the university, the laboratory and the clinic.

  In the two years since passing his internship exams, he has published a number of authoritative papers. So there is Maurice Buret the ‘young savant’, who is sober, stern and reserved. In this role, he has a ‘complex’ love affair with a young ‘passionate, dark’ nurse whom he went to bed with for the first time enthusiastically, after a long technical discussion about gold salts.

  And then there’s the second Maurice Buret, the easy-going man about town, a Parisian Maurice, well-read, intelligent and gallant, well received in diplomatic circles and very successful in the great salons. In this second role he has other and more varied love affairs, from the adulterous to the innocent, from the heart-breaking to the frivolous.

  Then, finally, comes Maurice Buret the moralist, the director of the previous two, observer and cynic, reader of books, judge of people, seeker of interesting psychological cases. It’s the version I first knew and the one I prefer. Does this continual shuttling between different mind-sets not tire him out? Judging from his excellent health, it seems not.

  ‘Maurice, you’re a master.’

  ‘Let’s not exaggerate. All games are complicated when you’re not familiar with them, and very simple when you are. I know the game – that’s all. I always know what I want and I know where to find it. Do I need a cynical love affair? The dark Christine can always be found between five and seven at the laboratory. But perhaps I need a sentimental interlude? Fair Alice Vignac can be contacted through the operator at 14-99. I need frenzied conversation with metaphysical exhortations? Robert Grévy is at his editor’s desk every night from twelve to two. I’m interested in social issues? Bertrand is always well informed. I finally want to give all these stories a certain order, to classify them, to taste them, to judge them. You’re here and suit my requirements perfectly.’

  ‘But what you’re saying is monstrous. Where are you among all these experiences? Which one is you? The cynic? The sentimentalist? The sceptic? I fear you’re nothing. You live by being reflected in others. You’re something very artificial: you’re the raisonneur of the comedy.’

  ‘I don’t dislike the role and I accept it – minus the compassion you extend to me. I take delight in my way of life It consists in asking of each person precisely what he’s able to give you. Think of any emotional scene you know and you’ll see that it arises from an inappropriate demand being made. My whole philosophy can be reduced to one precept, which I warmly recommend to you: “There’s no point riding a calf in the hope it’ll become a stallion.”’

  *

  But the most wonderful thing about Maurice Buret isn’t his passion for analysing people, it’s his lack of a moral sensibility. More still, it’s his feeling for vice, his curiosity about the twisted. He’s a healthy, orderly fellow with a strong sense for what’s appropriate, a sense of balance inherited from his provincial bourgeois family. He’s a Breton, from a nation of merchants and sailors.

  That doesn’t prevent him looking for, and provoking when needs be, various ‘scandalous acts’. For two months he was in love with Germaine Audoux. To my amazement, as it was one of his longest love affairs, and nothing explains such constancy to a girl who is perhaps not ugly but is certainly no beauty. I discovered the secret one day when Maurice had wound up the chapter with Germaine with all the necessary details: she was addicted to ether.

  ‘You’ve no idea how instructive it is. At the clinic I’ve only come across cases of severe intoxication, and in the manuals only generalizations. Without Germaine, ether would have been something abstract. With Germaine, it’s a drama.’

  I’d like to burst out with: ‘But what are you, a machine for recording dramas? A detective? A psychological secret agent? A dabbler in souls?’ But I stop myself in time. The one feeling Maurice is incapable of is indignation.

  He’s probably the most intelligent man I’ve ever known, because that’s all there is to him. Nothing else: neither moral nor immoral, neither good nor bad. Intelligence for him takes the place of sensitivity. There are emotions and nuances that he can’t help but feel. He understands them. He doesn’t have instincts, he doesn’t have reflexes: he orients himself through awareness. I wonder what he would do if caught up in a great passion, one that devastates him, consumes him and overwhelms him … Ridiculous! There’s no chance of such a person having to face this kind of passion. Maurice would be up to imposing order on a cyclone.

  Wherever he goes, he finds out how to orient himself. In a crowd of people or in a symphony, in a landscape or in a book, his first concern is to establish north and south. Then, knowing the route back, he allows himself to get adventurous. (S’égarer est un plaisir délicieux, à condition que la route de Paris ne soit pas éloignée.)

  *

  At the moment, Maurice is taking care of the Robert Grévy–Jacques Bertrand business. ‘A must-be couple’, he’s engraved in his imaginary notebook under the heading ‘Robert’, the day he introduced him to Jacques.

  ‘But Bertrand isn’t homosexual,’ I object, scandalized.

  ‘He will be. He has what it takes.’

  ‘And Robert Grévy?’

  ‘Used to be. Filled with nostalgia.’

  Robert Grévy is married. His wife, Suzanne, who knows certain things about his past, doesn’t let him out of her sight. She’s a fiery, watchful wife.

  ‘As long as Suzanne’s around, there’s nothing doing,’ observes Buret, summing it up. Then he decides: ‘Suzanne needs to take a little trip.’

  Tuesday, lunch with the Grévys.

  ‘Why are you looking at me that way, Maurice?’ asks Suzanne, surprised.

  ‘What way?’

  ‘I don’t know; worried, perhaps.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing. I thought you’d coughed.’

  ‘Yes, I had something stuck in my throat.’

  ‘Just as well it was nothing. It seemed suspicious.’

  ‘Suspicious?’

  ‘What are you getting alarmed about? It was imprudent of me to say anything. You won’t give me any peace now. Now I’m sure you think you have tuberculosis.’

  ‘No Maurice – but, anyhow, if you say …’

  ‘Know what? How about you pop into the hospital tomorrow and we’ll do an X-ray. To put your mind at rest.’

  Three days later, Suzanne leaves for Savoy, advised to spend a month in the sun on a deck-chair. Of course, the X-ray showed two or three lesions.

  Maurice Buret gives a modest laugh.

  Is he a corrupter? No. He has nothing in common with Gide, neither vice nor proselytizing nor disquiet. No, particularly not disquiet. People – whether they fall or are saved – matter little to Buret.

  ‘I trouble myself only to vary as much as I can the psychological vistas open to me. I have the impression Robert and Jacques would be a very good combination. So I’ll try to facilitate bringing them together, to smooth the road, to clarify their own vocation. It’s a small effort, behind the scenes.’

  I listen to
Maurice and make a serious effort not to be scandalized. I should understand once and for all that this man has no moral scruples and therefore should be accepted in his totality. Or rejected in his totality, which I find even harder.

  His spiritual patron (if the term ‘spiritual’ can be applied to him) isn’t Gide, but Laclos, and the moral atmosphere he lives in closely resembles that of Les Liaisons dangereuses, which is libertine rather than perverse, because it is not vice that dominates, but the intellectual appetite for always coming up with amusing games.

  *

  Only after an absence of several weeks (one of those mysterious trips, from which he returns with surprising personal reports), do I realize what Buret’s friendship means to me. He brings with him the daring sense that everything is possible in life, that all women are for the conquering, all doors to be opened. Something odd: though I know him to be cautious, methodical and reflective in everything he does, he still gives the impression of living spontaneously.

  ‘You even simulate spontaneity, my dear Maurice.’

  ‘I don’t simulate: I organize. I organize my spontaneity. You take me for a cynic, but I’m an enthusiast. It’s just that my enthusiasm is systematic.’

  An hour of conversation with him is a personal lesson in clarity. A term must be found for every nuance, a corrective for every misunderstanding. ‘Everything can be defined,’ he stubbornly believes, and does not forgive a single ill-chosen word or ill-defined distinction. I’ve never heard him pass a vague judgement on anything, be it a woman or a piece of music or a painting. He will always tell me exactly what he likes or doesn’t, strictly maintaining the distinction between one nuance and another.

  In his company, life becomes clear-cut, correctly proportioned, the horizons visible.

  2

  The offices of Ralph T. Rice in Boulevard Haussmann are barely a modest agency compared to the head offices in Piaţa Rosetti in Bucharest. A few rooms, some desks, a small archive in the process of being organized. I don’t know exactly what old Ralph wants to set up here: a simple sales office or a public company. It’s up to him to decide whether or not we get working on the Le Havre project. (I’d prefer Dieppe, however, which seems to me more suitable for commerce, and from the construction standpoint is immeasurably more open and spacious. I’ve sent a number of plans to the master, who’ll decide.) He may in the end do nothing. It’s not the moment for heavy investment in a business that, even if all goes well, won’t turn a profit for several years at least. At the end of 1929, when Rice Enterprises Inc. began to realize old Ralph’s age-old plan of establishing a French division, the project seemed feasible. Today, in 1931, it’s risky at best, and perhaps even foolhardy. Petrol is suffering a crisis matched only by agriculture. Rice is a daring businessman, but not one to play the stock markets.