Симона де Бовуар – The Mandarins (страница 35)

‘Our goals, but not our methods,’ Henri interrupted. Regretfully, he thought, ‘So that’s why Dubreuilh was so impatient to see me!’ The good spirits with which he began the evening had, in the course of the last few minutes, completely deserted him. ‘Isn’t it ever possible to spend an evening among friends without talking politics?’ he asked himself. There was nothing in their conversation so terribly urgent that Dubreuilh couldn’t have put it off for another day or two. He had become as much a crank as Scriassine.

‘Precisely. And take my word for it, it would be to your advantage to change your methods,’ Dubreuilh said.

Henri shook his head. ‘I’ll show you letters I receive every day, letters from intellectuals especially – teachers, students. What they all like about L’Espoir is its fairness. If I tack on a programme, I lose their trust.’

‘Of course. Intellectuals are delighted when you encourage them to be neither fish, flesh, nor fowl,’ Dubreuilh replied. ‘Their trust? Who needs it?’

‘Give me two or three years and I’ll lead them by the hand to the SRL.’

‘If you really believe that, then all I can say is you’re a starry-eyed idealist!’ Dubreuilh said.

‘Possibly,’ Henri replied with a slight show of annoyance. ‘But in ’41 they branded me an idealist too.’ Firmly, he added, ‘I have my own ideas about what a newspaper should be.’

Dubreuilh gestured evasively We’ll talk about it again. But believe me, six months from now either L’Espoir aligns itself with our politics or it’s all washed up.’

‘All right, we’ll talk about it again in six months,’ Henri said.

Suddenly, he felt tired and at a loss. Dubreuilh’s proposition had taken him by surprise, but he was absolutely resolved to do nothing about it. He felt a desperate need to be alone in order to clear his mind. ‘I have to be getting home,’ he said.

Paula remained silent on the way home, but they were no sooner in the apartment than she began her attack. ‘Are you going to give him the paper?’

‘Of course not,’ Henri said.

‘Are you really sure?’ she asked. ‘Dubreuilh wants it, and he is stubborn.’

‘I’m pretty stubborn myself.’

‘But you always end up by giving in to him,’ Paula said, her voice suddenly exploding. ‘Why did you ever agree to join the SRL? As if you didn’t have enough to do already! You’ve been back for four days now, and we haven’t had five minutes together. And you haven’t written a line of your novel!’

‘I’ll get back to it tomorrow. Things are beginning to settle down at the paper.’

‘That’s no reason to burden yourself with new loads,’ Paula said, her voice rising. ‘Dubreuilh did you a favour ten years ago; he can’t expect you to repay him for it for the rest of your life.’

‘But I’m not working with him simply to repay a favour, Paula. The thing interests me.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Don’t give me that!’

‘I mean it,’ he said.

‘Do you believe all that talk about a new war?’ she asked with a worried look.

‘No,’ Henri replied. ‘There may be a few firebrands in America, but they don’t like war over there. One thing you can be sure of – there’s going to be a radical change in the world for better or for worse. What we’ve got to do is to try to make it a change for the better.’

‘The world is always changing. But before the war you let it change without getting yourself involved,’ Paula said.

Henri started up the stairway. ‘It isn’t before the war any more,’ he replied, yawning.

‘But why can’t we go back to living like we did then?’

‘Circumstances are different – and so am I.’ He yawned again. ‘I’m tired.’

Yes, he was tired, but when he lay down in bed beside Paula he couldn’t sleep. The champagne, the vodka, Dubreuilh, all conspired to keep him awake. No, he wouldn’t give him L’Espoir. That was so clear to him that it needed no justifying. Nevertheless, he wished he could find a few good reasons for his stand. Was he really an idealist? And exactly what did that mean? Naturally, and to a certain extent, he believed in people’s freedom, in their basic good will, in the power of ideas. You can’t possibly believe that the class struggle is outmoded, can you? No, he couldn’t believe it, but what, after all, did that mean? He turned over on his back. He felt like lighting a cigarette, but he was afraid of awakening Paula, who would have been only too happy to distract him in his sleeplessness. He didn’t move. ‘My God!’ he said to himself with a sharp feeling of anxiety. ‘How ignorant we really are!’ He read a great deal, but he had little real knowledge excepting in the field of literature. And even in literature … Until now it hadn’t bothered him – no need for any specialized knowledge to fight in the Resistance or to found a clandestine newspaper. He had believed that that was the way it would continue to be. Obviously he had been wrong. What is an opinion? What is an idea? What power do words have? On whom? And under what circumstances? If you publish a newspaper, you have to be able to answer those questions. And what with one thing leading to another, you eventually question everything. ‘You have to decide in ignorance,’ Henri said to himself. ‘Even Dubreuilh often acts blindly – Dubreuilh, with all his learning.’ Henri sighed; he was unable to resign himself to this defeat. There are degrees of ignorance, and the simple fact was that he was particularly ill-equipped for the political life. ‘Well, I’ll just have to start working at it,’ he said to himself. But if he really wanted to extend his knowledge, it would require years of study. Economics, history, philosophy – he would never be done with it! What a job! And all that just to come to terms with Marxism! Writing would be completely out of the question, and he wanted to write. Well? Whatever happened, one thing was sure: he wasn’t going to let L’Espoir fail simply because he wasn’t an expert on all the fine points of historical materialism. He closed his eyes. There was something unfair in this whole thing. He felt obliged, like everyone else, to take an active interest in politics. That being the case, it shouldn’t require a specialized apprenticeship; if politics was a field reserved for technicians, then they shouldn’t be asking him to get mixed up in it.

‘What I need is time!’ Henri thought as he awakened the next morning. ‘The only problem is finding enough time.’ The living-room door opened and closed again. Paula had already gone out; now, back again, she was tiptoeing about the room. He threw back the covers. ‘If I lived alone, I’d save hours.’ No more idle conversations, no more formal meals. While drinking his coffee in the little Cafe Biard on the corner, he would read the morning papers, would work right up to the moment when he would have to leave for the office; a sandwich would do for lunch, and his day’s work over, he would have a quick dinner and read late into the night. That way, he would be able to keep everything going at once – L’Espoir, his novel, his reading. ‘I’ll speak to Paula this morning,’ he told himself firmly.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Paula asked cheerfully.

‘Very well.’

She was arranging flowers in a vase on one of the tables and humming cheerfully to herself. Ever since Henri’s return, she made a point of being always cheerful, ostentatiously cheerful. ‘I made you some real coffee. And we still have a little fresh butter left.’

He sat down and spread a piece of toast with butter. ‘Did you eat?’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘You’re never hungry.’

‘Oh, don’t worry about me. I eat; in fact I eat quite well.’

He bit into the toast. What could he do if she didn’t want to eat? After all, he couldn’t very well force-feed her. ‘You were up very early this morning,’ he said.

‘Yes, I couldn’t sleep.’ She placed a thick album with gilt-edged pages on the table. ‘I’ve been putting in the pictures you took in Portugal.’ She opened the album and pointed to the stairway of Braga. Nadine, smiling, was sitting on one of the steps. ‘You see, I’m not trying to escape the truth,’ she said.

‘Yes, I know.’

No, she wasn’t escaping the truth but, much more disconcerting, she saw through it. She turned back several pages. ‘Even in these old snapshots of you as a child you had that same distrustful sort of smile. How little you’ve changed!’ Before, he had enjoyed helping her collect and arrange his souvenirs; today it all seemed so futile. He was annoyed by Paula’s stubborn determination to exhume and embalm him.

‘Here you are when I first met you!’

‘I don’t look very bright, do I?’ he said, pushing away the album.

‘You were young; you were very demanding,’ she said. She stood in front of Henri and, in a sudden burst of anger, asked, ‘Why did you give an interview to Lendemain?’

‘Oh! Is the new issue out?’

‘Yes, I just bought a copy.’ She went to get the magazine at the other end of the living-room, brought it back, and threw it on the table. ‘I thought we’d decided you’d never grant any interviews.’

‘If you stick to all the decisions you make …’

‘But this was an important one. You used to say that when you start smiling at reporters, you’re ripe for the Académie Française.’