Nausea (13 page)

Six years agoùwe had just separated by mutual agreementù I decided to leave for Tokyo. I wrote her a few words. I could no longer call her "my dear love"; in all innocence I began, "My Dear Anny."

"I admire your cheek," she answered, "I have never been and am not your dear Anny. And I must ask you to believe that you are not my dear Antoine. If you don't know what to call me, don't call me anything, it's better that way."

I take her letter from my despatch case. She did not write "My Dear Antoine." Nor was there anything further at the end of the letter: "I must see you. Anny." Nothing that could give me any indication of her feelings. I can't complain: I recognize her love of perfection there. She always wanted to have "perfect moments." If the time was not convenient, she took no more interest in anything, her eyes became lifeless, she dragged along lazily like a great awkward girl. Or else she would pick a quarrel with me:

"You blow your nose solemnly like a bourgeois, and you cough very carefully in your handkerchief."

It was better not to answer, just wait: suddenly, at some signal which escapes me now, she shuddered, her fine languishing features hardened and she began her ant's work. She had an imperious and charming magic; she hummed between her teeth, looking all around, then straightened herself up smiling, came to shake me by the shoulders, and, for a few instants, seemed to give orders to the objects that surrounded her. She explained to me, in a low rapid voice, what she expected of me.

"Listen, do you want to make an effort or don't you? You were so stupid the last time. Don't you see how beautiful this moment could be? Look at the sky, look at the colour of the sun on the carpet. I've got my green dress on and my face isn't made up, I'm quite pale. Go back, go and sit in the shadow; you understand what you have to do? Come on! How stupid you are! Speak to me!"

I felt that the success of the enterprise was in my hands: the moment had an obscure meaning which had to be trimmed and perfected; certain motions had to be made, certain words spoken: I staggered under the weight of my responsibility. I stared and saw nothing, I struggled in the midst of rites which

Anny invented on the spot and tore them to shreds with my strong arms. At those times she hated me.

Certainly, I would go to see her. I still respect and love her with all my heart. I hope that someone else has had better luck and skill in the game of perfect moments.

"Your damned hair spoils everything," she said. "What can you do with a red-head?"

She smiled. First I lost the memory of her eyes, then the memory of her long body. I kept her smile as long as possible and then, finally lost that three years ago. Just now, brusquely, as I was taking the letter from the landlady's hands, it came back to me; I thought I saw Anny smiling. I try to refresh my memory: I need to feel all the tendernes that Anny inspires; it is there, this tenderness, it is near me, only asking to be born. But the smile does not return: it is finished. I remain dry and empty.

A man comes in, shivering.

"Messieurs, dames, bonjour."

He sits down without taking off his greenish overcoat. He rubs his long hands, clasping and unclasping his fingers.

"What will you have?"

He gives a start, his eyes look worried:

"Eh? give me a Byrrh and water."

The waitress does not move. In the glass her face seems to sleep. Her eyes are indeed open but they are only slits. That's the way she is, she is never in a hurry to wait on customers, she always takes a moment to dream over their orders. She must allow herself the pleasure of imagining: I believe she's thinking about the bottle she's going to take from above the counter, the white label and red letters, the thick black syrup she is going to pour out: it's a little as though she were drinking it herself.

I slip Anny's letter back into my despatch case: she has done what she could; I cannot reach the woman who took it in her hands, folded and put it in the envelope. Is it possible even to think of someone in the past? As long as we loved each other, we never allowed the meanest of our instants, the smallest grief, to be detached and forgotten, left behind. Sounds, smells, nuances of light, even the thoughts we never told each other; we carried them all away and they remained alive: even now they have the power to give us joy and pain. Not a memory: an implacable, torrid love, without shadow, without escape, without shelter. Three years rolled into one. That is why we parted: we did not have enough strength to bear this burden. And then, when Annyleft me, all of a sudden, all at once, the three years crumbled into the past. I didn't even surfer, I felt emptied out. Then time began to flow again and the emptiness grew larger. Then, in Saigon when I decided to go back to France, all that was still leftùstrange faces, places, quays on the banks of long riversùall was wiped out. Now my past is nothing more than an enormous vacuum. My present: this waitress in the black blouse dreaming near the counter, this man. It seems as though I have learned all I know of life in books. The palaces of Benares, the terrace of the Leper King, the temples of Java with their great broken steps, are reflected in my eyes for an instant, but they have remained there, on the spot. The tramway that passes in front of the Hotel Printania in the evening does not catch the reflection of the neon sign-board; it flames up for an instant, then goes on with black windows.

This little man has not stopped looking at me: he bothers me. He tries to give himself importance. The waitress has finally decided to serve him. She raises her great black arm lazily, reaches the bottle, and brings it to him with a glass.

"Here you are, Monsieur."

"Monsieur Achille," he says with urbanity.

She pours without answering; all of a sudden he takes his finger from his nose, places both hands flat on the table. He throws his head back and his eyes shine. He says in a cold voice:

"Poor girl."

The waitress gives a start and I start too: he has an indefinable expression, perhaps one of amazement, as if it were someone else who had spoken. All three of us are uncomfortable.

The fat waitress recovers first: she has no imagination. She measures M. Achille with dignity: she knows quite well that one hand alone would be enough to tear him from his seat and throw him out.

"And what makes you think I'm a poor girl?"

He hesitates. He looks taken aback, then he laughs. His face crumples up into a thousand wrinkles, he makes vague gestures with his wrist.

"She's annoyed. It was just to say something: I didn't mean to offend."

But she turns her back on him and goes behind the counter: she is really offended. He laughs again:

"Ha ha! You know that just slipped out. Are you cross? She's cross with me," he says, addressing himself vaguely to me.

I turn my head away. He raises his glass a little but he is not thinking about drinking: he blinks his eyes, looking surprised and intimidated; he looks as if he were trying to remember something. The waitress is sitting at the counter; she picks up her sewing. Everything is silent again: but it isn't the same silence. It's raining: tapping lightly against the frosted glass windows; if there are any more masked children in the street, the rain is going to spoil their cardboard masks.

The waitress turns on the lights: it is hardly two o'clock but the sky is all black, she can't see to sew. Soft glow: people are in their houses, they have undoubtedly turned on the lights too. They read, they watch the sky from the window. For them it means something different. They have aged differently. They live in the midst of legacies, gifts, each piece of furniture holds a memory. Clocks, medallions, portraits, shells, paperweights, screens, shawls. They have closets full of bottles, stuffs, old clothes, newspapers; they have kept everything. The past is a landlord's luxury.

Where shall I keep mine? You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free.

The little man stirs and sighs. He is all wrapped in his overcoat but from time to time he straightens up and puts on a haughty look. He has no past either. Looking closely, you would undoubtedly find in a cousin's house a photograph showing him at a wedding, with a wing collar, stiff shirt and a slight, young man's moustache. Of myself I don't think that even that is left.

Here he is looking at me again. This time he's going to speak to me, and I feel all taut inside. There is no sympathy between us: we are alike, that's all. He is alone, as I am, but more sunken into solitude than I. He must be waiting for his own Nausea or something of that sort. Now there are still people who recognize me, who see me and think: "He's one of us." So? What does he want? He must know that we can do nothing for one another. The families are in their houses, in the midst of their memories. And here we are, two wanderers, without memory. If he were suddenly to stand up and speak to me, I'd jump into the air.

The door opens with a great to-do: it is Doctor Roge. "Good day everybody."He comes in, ferocious and suspicious, swaying, swaying a little on his long legs which can barely support his body. I see him often, on Sundays, at the Brasserie Vezelise, but he doesn't know me. He is built like the old monitors at Joinville, arms like thighs, a chest measurement of 110, and he can't stand up straight.

"Jeanne, my little Jeanne."

He trots over to the coat rack to hang up his wide felt hat on the peg. The waitress has put away her sewing and comes without hurrying, sleep walking, to help the doctor out of his raincoat.

"What will you have, Doctor?"

He studies her gravely. That's what I call a handsome, masculine face. Worn, furrowed by life and passions. But the doctor has understood life, mastered his passions.

"I really don't know what I want," he says in a deep voice.

He has dropped onto the bench opposite me; he wipes his forehead. He feels at ease as soon as he gets off his feet. His great eyes, black and imperious, are intimidating.

"I'll have . . . I'll have ... Oh, calvados. . . ."

The waitress, without making a move, studies this enormous, pitted face. She is dreamy. The little man raises his head with a smile of relief. And it is true: this colossus has freed us. Something horrible was going to catch us. I breathe freely: we are among men now.

"Well, is that calvados coming?"

The waitress gives a start and leaves. He has stretched out his stout arms and grasped the table at both ends. M. Achille is joyful; he would like to catch the doctor's eye. But he swings his legs and shifts about on the bench in vain, he is so thin that he makes no noise.

The waitress brings the calvados. With a nod of her head she points out the little man to the doctor. Doctor Roge slowly turns: he can't move his neck.

"So it's you, you old swine," he shouts, "aren't you dead yet?"

He addresses the waitress:

"You let people like that in here?"

He stares at the little man ferociously. A direct look which puts everything in place. He explains:

"He's crazy as a loon, that's that."

He doesn't even take the trouble to let on that he's joking. He knows that the loony won't be angry, that he's going to smile.

And there it is: the man smiles with humility. A crazy loon: he relaxes, he feels protected against himself: nothing will happen to him today. I am reassured too. A crazy old loon: so that was it, so that was all.

The doctor laughs, he gives me an engaging, conspiratorial glance: because of my size, undoubtedlyùand besides, I have a clean shirt onùhe wants to let me in on his joke.

I do not laugh, I do not respond to his advances: then, without stopping to laugh, he turns the terrible fire of his eyes on me. We look at each other in silence for several seconds: he sizes me up, looking at me with half-closed eyes, up and down he places me. In the crazy loon category? In the tramp category?

Still, he is the one who turns his face away, allows himself to deflate before one lone wretch, without social importance, it isn't worth talking aboutùyou can forget it right away. He rolls a cigarette and lights it, then stays motionless with his eyes hard and staring like an old man's.

The fine wrinkles; he has all of them: horizontal ones running across his forehead, crow's feet, bitter lines at each corner of the mouth, without counting the yellow cords depending from his chin. There's a lucky man: as soon as you perceive him, you can tell he must have suffered, that he is someone who has lived. He deserves his face for he has never, for one instant, lost an occasion of utilizing his past to the best of his ability: he has stuffed it full, used his experience on women and children, exploited them.

M. Achille is probably happier than he has ever been. He is agape with admiration; he drinks his Byrrh in small mouthfuls and swells his cheeks out with it. The doctor knew how to take him! The doctor wasn't the one to let himself be hypnotized by an old madman on the verge of having his fit; one good blow, a few rough, lashing words, that's what they need. The doctor has experience. He is a professional in experience: doctors, priests, magistrates and army officers know men through and through as if they had made them.

I am ashamed for M. Achille. We are on the same side, we should have stood up against them. But he left me, he went over to theirs: he honestly believes in experience. Not in his, not in mine. In Doctor Roge's. A little while ago M. Achille felt queer, he felt lonely: now he knows that there are others like him, many others: Doctor Roge has met them, he could tell M. Achille the case history of each one of them and tell him how they ended up.M. Achille is simply a case and lets himself be brought back easily to the accepted ideas.