Four Novels (11 page)

For a space the girl hesitated, and then she pointed at the child:

“I wish I could, but I cannot.”

“I only meant that it seems to me that it does you good to talk. Particularly you. That was all I meant.”

“Oh, I understood that, but I cannot stay. I am late already.”

“Well then, I must say good-bye. You said it was on Saturdays that you went to that Dance Hall?”

“Yes. Every Saturday. If you came there we could have a dance together. If you would like to, I mean.”

“Yes, perhaps we could. If you would allow me to invite you?”

“I simply meant for the fun of it.”

“That is how I understood you. Well, perhaps we shall meet again. On Saturday perhaps, one never knows.”

“Perhaps. Well, good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

The girl took two steps and then turned back:

“I wanted to say . . . all I wanted to say was, why don’t you go for a walk . . . instead of sitting there waiting for the Square to close?”

“It is kind of you, but I think I would prefer to remain here until it shuts.”

“But just a little walk, for no particular reason. Just to look at things.”

“No, thank you. I really prefer to remain here. A walk means nothing to me.”

“It is going to become colder . . . and if I am so insistent it is only because . . . because perhaps you do not know what Squares are like toward closing time, how sad they can be. . . .”

“I do know. But I would rather stay here.”

“Do you always do that? Always wait for Squares to close?”

“No. Generally I am like you: it is a moment I avoid. But today I want to wait for it.”

“Perhaps you have your own reasons,” said the girl reflectively.

“I am a coward, that is why.”

The girl moved back a step towards him.

“Oh, if you say that,” she said, “it must be because of me, because of what I said.”

“No. It is because somehow this time of day always makes me want to recognize and to speak the truth.”

“Please don’t say things like that.”

“But surely my cowardice was clear in every word I said, ever since we started talking.”

“No. It is not the same thing as saying it all at once, in one word. You are wrong.”

The man smiled.

“Believe me, it is not such a very serious matter.”

“But I cannot understand why the fact that the Square is closing should suddenly make you discover that you are a coward.”

“Because I do nothing to avoid . . . despair. On the contrary.”

“But in that case what difference could a walk make?”

“To do anything to avoid it would be courageous. To create any diversion, however small.”

“I beg of you. Just take a little walk.”

“No. It would not be possible. My whole life is like this.”

“But try just once! Try.”

“No. I don’t want to start to change.”

“Ah! I see that I have talked far too much.”

“On the contrary. It was the great pleasure I had in listening to you that made me understand so well what I am really like: how submerged in cowardice. It is not your fault: I am no worse than I was yesterday, for example, and no better.”

“I am afraid I do not understand cowardice very well, but I know that yours suddenly seems to make my courage a little despicable.”

“And to me, you see, your courage makes my cowardice appear more dreadful still. That is what it means to talk.”

“It is as if, after knowing you, courage became slightly useless, a thing which, finally, one could do without.”

“In the end we only do what we can, you with your courage and me with my cowardice, and that is all that matters.”

“You are probably right, but why is it that courage seems so unattractive and cowardice so appealing? For it is like that, isn’t it?”

“It is all cowardice. If you only knew how facile it was.”

The little boy pulled at the girl’s hand.

“I’m tired,” he said again.

The man raised his eyes and seemed troubled.

“Do you think I am wrong?”

“Completely.”

“I am sorry.”

“Ah, if only you knew how little it mattered. It is as if someone other than I were involved.”

They waited a few moments in silence. The Square was emptying. At the ends of the streets the sky showed pink.

“It is true,” the girl said, and her voice was almost the voice of sleep, “that we do what we can, you with your cowardice and I with my courage.”

“And yet we manage to earn our livings. We have at least managed that.”

“Yes, that is true, we have managed that as well as anyone else.”

“And from time to time we even manage to talk.”

“Yes, even if it makes us unhappy afterwards.”

“Everything, no matter what, makes one unhappy. Sometimes even eating.”

“You mean eating after one has been hungry for too long?”

“Yes, just that.”

The child started to whimper. The girl looked at him as though for the first time.

“I must go,” she said.

She turned again to the child.

“Just for once,” she said to it gently, “just for once you must be good.”

And she turned again to the man.

“And so I will say good-bye.”

“Good-bye. Perhaps we will meet again at that Dance Hall.”

“Perhaps. You do not know yet if you will go there?”

The man made an effort to reply.

“Not yet, no.”

“How strange that is.”

“If you only know what a coward I am.”

“But you mustn’t let going to the Dance Hall depend on your cowardice. If you go, let it be for fun; for no other reason.”

The man made a further effort to reply.

“It is very difficult for me to know yet whether I will go. I cannot, no I cannot know now whether I will or not.”

“But you do go dancing from time to time?”

“Yes, without knowing anyone.”

It was the girl’s turn to smile.

“But just for the fun of it, that is all you must think of. And you will see how well I dance.”

“Believe me, if I went it would be for fun.”

The girl smiled even more. But it was a smile the man could ill support.

“I thought, if I understood you correctly, that you reproached me for allowing too little place for pleasure in my life?”

“It is true, yes.”

“You said I should be less suspicious of it than I am?”

“You know so little about it, if you only knew how little.”

“You must excuse me for saying this, but I have the feeling that
perhaps you know less about it than you imagine. I was talking of the pleasure of dancing of course.”

“Yes, of dancing with you.”

The child started whimpering again.

“We are going,” the girl said to him, and to the man, “I must say good-bye. Perhaps then we shall meet again this coming Saturday?”

“Perhaps, yes, perhaps. Good-bye.”

The girl turned and went off rapidly with the child. The man watched her going, watched her as hard as he could. She did not turn back. And he took this as a sign of encouragement to go to that Dance Hall.

MODERATO CANTABILE

TRANSLATED BY

RICHARD SEAVER

One

“W
ILL YOU PLEASE READ
what’s written above the score?” the lady asked.

“Moderato cantabile,” said the child.

The lady punctuated his reply by striking the keyboard with a pencil. The child remained motionless, his head turned towards his score.

“And what does moderato cantabile mean?”

“I don’t know.”

A woman, seated ten feet away, gave a sigh.

“Are you quite sure you don’t know what moderato cantabile means?” the lady repeated.

The child did not reply. The lady stifled an exasperated groan, and again struck the keyboard with her pencil. The child remained unblinking. The lady turned.

“Madame Desbaresdes, you have a very stubborn little boy.”

Anne Desbaresdes sighed again.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she said.

The child, motionless, his eyes lowered, was the only one to remember that dusk had just exploded. It made him shiver.

“I told you the last time, I told you the time before that, I’ve told you a hundred times, are you sure you don’t know what it means?”

The child decided not to answer. The lady looked again at the object before her, her rage mounting.

“Here we go again,” said Anne Desbaresdes under her breath.

“The trouble is,” the lady went on, “the trouble is you don’t want to say it.”

Anne Desbaresdes also looked again at this child, from head to toe, but in a different way from the lady.

“You’re going to say it this minute,” the lady shouted.

The child showed no surprise. He still didn’t reply. Then the lady
struck the keyboard a third time, so hard that the pencil broke. Right next to the child’s hands. His hands were round and milky, still scarcely formed. They were clenched and unmoving.

“He’s a difficult child,” Anne Desbaresdes offered timidly.

The child turned his head towards the voice, quickly towards his mother, to make sure of her existence, then resumed his pose as an object, facing the score. His hands remained clenched.

“I don’t care whether he’s difficult or not, Madame Desbaresdes,” said the lady. “Difficult or not, he has to do as he’s told, or suffer the consequences.”

In the ensuing silence the sound of the sea came in through the open window. And with it the muffled noise of the town on this spring afternoon.

“For the last time. Are you sure you don’t know what it means?”

A motorboat was framed in the open window. The child, facing his score, hardly moved—only his mother noticed it—as the motorboat passed through his blood. The low purr of the motor could be heard throughout the town. There were only a few pleasure craft. The whole sky was tinted pink by the last rays of the sun. Outside, on the docks, other children stopped and looked.

“Are you really sure, for the last time now, are you sure you don’t know what it means?”

Again, the motorboat passed by.

The lady was taken aback by such stubbornness. Her anger abated, and she so despaired at being so unimportant to this child who, by a single gesture, she could have made to answer her, that she was suddenly aware of the sterility of her own existence.

“What a profession, what a profession,” she lamented.

Anne Desbaresdes made no comment, but tilted her head slightly as if, perhaps, agreeing.

The motorboat had finally passed from the frame of the open window. The sound of the sea arose, boundless, in the child’s silence.

“Moderato?”

The child opened his fist, moved it, and lightly scratched his calf. His gesture was unconstrained, and perhaps the lady admitted its innocence.

“I don’t know,” he said, after he had finished scratching himself.

The color of the sunset suddenly became so magnificent that it changed the gold of the child’s hair.

“It’s easy,” the woman said a bit more calmly.

She blew her nose.

“What a child,” Anne Desbaresdes said happily, “really, what a child! How in the world did I happen to have such an obstinate . . .”

The lady decided that such pride deserved no comment.

“It means,” she said to the child, as though admitting defeat, “for the hundredth time, it means moderately and melodiously.”

“Moderately and melodiously,” the child said mechanically.

The lady turned around.

“Really. I mean
really.”

“Yes, it’s terrible,” Anne Desbaresdes said, laughing, “stubborn as a goat. It’s terrible.”

“Begin again,” the lady said.

The child did not begin again.

“I said begin again.”

The child still did not move. The sound of the sea again filled the silence of his stubbornness. The pink sky exploded in a final burst of color.

“I don’t want to learn how to play the piano,” the child said.

In the street downstairs a woman screamed, a long, drawn-out scream so shrill it overwhelmed the sound of the sea. Then it stopped abruptly.

“What was that?” the child shouted.

“Something happened,” the lady said.

The sound of the sea moved in again. The pink sky began to fade.

“No,” said Anne Desbaresdes, “it’s nothing.”

She got up and went to the piano.

“You’re so nervous,” the lady said, looking at both of them with a disapproving air.

Anne Desbaresdes took her child by the shoulders, shook him, and almost shouted:

“You’ve got to learn the piano, you’ve got to.”

The child was also trembling, for the same reason, because he was afraid.

“I don’t like the piano,” he murmured.

Scattered shouts followed the first, confirming an already established fact, henceforth reassuring. So the lesson went on.

“You’ve got to,” Anne Desbaresdes insisted.

The lady shook her dead, disapproving such tenderness. Dusk began to sweep over the sea. And the sky slowly darkened, except for the red in the west, till that faded as well.

“Why?” the child asked.

“Because music, my love . . .”

The child took his time, trying to understand, did not understand, but admitted it.

“All right. But who screamed?”

“I’m waiting,” said the lady.

He began to play. The music rose above the murmur of a crowd that was beginning to gather on the dock beneath the window.

“There now, there you are,” Anne Desbaresdes said happily, “you see.”

“When he wants to,” the lady said.

The child finished the sonatina. The noise from the street grew more insistent, invading the room.

“What’s going on?” the child asked again.

“Play it again,” the lady replied. “And don’t forget: moderato cantabile. Think of a lullaby.”

“I never sing him songs,” Anne Desbaresdes said. “Tonight he’s going to ask me for one, and he’ll ask me so sweetly I won’t be able to refuse.”

The lady didn’t want to listen. The child began to play Diabelli’s sonatina again.

“B flat,” the lady said sharply, “you always forget.”

The growing clamor of voices of both sexes rose from the dock. Everyone seemed to be saying the same thing, but it was impossible to distinguish the words. The sonatina went innocently along, but this time, in the middle of it, the lady could take no more.

“Stop.”

The child stopped. The lady turned to Anne Desbaresdes.

“I’m sure something serious has happened.”

They all went to the window. To their left, some twenty yards from the building, a crowd had already gathered on the dock in front of the café door. From the neighboring streets people were running up to join the crowd. Everyone was looking into the café.

“I’m afraid this part of town . . .” the lady said.

She turned and took the boy’s arm. “Start again, one last time, where you left off.”

“What’s happened?”

“Your sonatina.”

The child played. He played it at the same tempo as before, and as the
end of the lesson approached he gave it the nuances she wanted, moderato cantabile.

“It upsets me when he does as he’s told like that,” Anne Desbaresdes said. “I guess I don’t know what I want. It’s a cross I have to bear.”

The child went on playing well.

“What a way to bring him up, Madame Desbaresdes,” the lady said almost happily.

Then the child stopped.

“Why are you stopping?”

“I thought . . .”

He began playing the sonatina again. The noise of the crowd grew increasingly loud, becoming so powerful, even at that height, that it drowned out the music.

“Don’t forget that B flat in the key,” the lady said, “otherwise it would be perfect.”

Once again the music crescendoed to its final chord. And the hour was up. The lady announced that the lesson was finished for today.

“You’ll have plenty of trouble with that one, I don’t mind telling you,” she said.

“I already do. He worries me to death.”

Anne Desbaresdes bowed her head, her eyes closed in the painful smile of endless childbirth. Below, a welter of shouts and orders proved the consummation of an unknown incident.

‘Tomorrow we’ll know it perfectly,” the lady said.

The child ran to the window.

“Some cars are coming,” he said.

The crowd blocked both sides of the café entrance, and was still growing, but the influx from the neighboring streets had lessened. Still, it was much larger than one might have suspected. The people moved aside and made a path for a black van to get through. Three men got out and went into the café.

“Police,” someone said.

Anne Desbaresdes asked what had happened.

“Someone’s been killed. A woman.”

She left her child in front of Mademoiselle Giraud’s door, joined the body of the crowd, and made her way forward till she reached the front row of silent people looking through the open windows. At the far end of the café, in the semi-darkness of the back room, a woman was lying
motionless on the floor. A man was crouched over her, clutching her shoulders, and saying quietly:

“Darling. My darling.”

He turned and looked at the crowd; they saw his eyes, which were expressionless, except for the stricken, indelible, inward look of his desire. The patronne stood calmly near the van and waited.

“I tried to call you three times.”

“Poor woman,” someone said.

“Why?” Anne Desbaresdes asked.

“No one knows.”

In his dilirium the man threw himself on the inert body. An inspector took him by the arm and pulled him up. He did not resist. It seemed that all dignity had left him forever. He looked absently at the inspector. The inspector let go of him, took a notebook and pencil from his pocket, asked for the man’s identity, and waited.

“It’s no use. I won’t say anything now,” the man said.

The inspector didn’t press the matter, and went over to join his colleagues who were questioning the patronne at the last table in the back room.

The man sat down beside the dead woman, stroked her hair and smiled at her. A young man with a camera around his neck dashed up to the café door and took a picture of the man sitting there smiling. By the glare of the flashbulb the crowd could see that the woman was still young, and that blood was coming from her mouth in thin trickles, and that there was blood on the man’s face where he had kissed her. In the crowd, someone said:

“It’s horrible,” and turned away.

The man lay down again beside his wife’s body, but only for a moment. Then, as if he were tired, he got up again.

“Don’t let him get away,” the patronne shouted.

But the man had only got up in order to find a better position, closer to the body. He lay there, seemingly resolute and calm, holding her tightly in his arms, his face pressed to hers, in the blood flowing from her mouth.

But the inspectors had finished taking the patronne’s testimony and slowly, in single file, walked over to him, an identical air of utter boredom on their faces.

The child, sitting obediently on Mademoiselle Giraud’s front steps, had almost forgotten. He was humming the Diabelli sonatina.

“It was nothing,” Anne Desbaresdes said. “Now we must go home.”

The child followed her. More policemen arrived—too late, for no reason. As they passed the café the man came out, flanked by the inspectors. The crowd parted silently to let him through.

“He’s not the one who screamed,” the child said. “He didn’t scream.”

“No, it wasn’t he. Don’t look.”

“Why did she . . .?”

“I don’t know.”

The man walked meekly to the van. Then, when he reached it, he shook off the inspectors, and, without a word, ran quickly back towards the café. But just as he got there the lights went out. He stopped dead, again followed the inspectors to the van, and got inside. Then, perhaps, he was crying, but it was already too dark to see anything but his trembling, blood-stained face. If he was crying, it was too dark to see his tears.

“Really,” Anne Desbaresdes said as they reached the Boulevard de la Mer, “you might remember it once and for all. Moderato means moderately slow, and cantabile means melodiously. It’s easy.”

Two

I
T WAS THE FOLLOWING
day. At the other end of town the factory chimneys were still smoking, and it was already later than when they went to the port every Friday.

“Come along,” Anne Desbaresdes said to her child.

They walked along the Boulevard de la Mer. Some people were already out for a stroll. There were even a few in swimming.

The child was used to taking a daily walk through town with his mother, so that she could take him anywhere. But once they had passed the first breakwater and reached the place where the tugboats were moored just below Mademoiselle Giraud’s house, he became frightened.

“Why did we come here?”

“Why not?” said Anne Desbaresdes. “Today we’re only going for a walk. Come along. Here or somewhere else.”

The child gave in, and followed her blindly.

She went straight to the bar. A man was there alone, reading a newspaper.

“A glass of wine,” she ordered.

Her voice trembled. The patronne looked surprised, then composed herself.