Nausea (14 page)

How I would like to tell him he's being deceived, that he is the butt of the important. Experienced professionals? They have dragged out their life in stupor and semi-sleep, they have married hastily, out of impatience, they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafes, at weddings and funerals. Sometimes, caught in the tide, they have struggled against it without understanding what was happening to them. All that has happened around them has eluded them; long, obscure shapes, events from afar, brushed by them rapidly and when they turned to look all had vanished. And then, around forty, they christen their small obstinacies and a few proverbs with the name of experience, they begin to simulate slot machines: put a coin in the left hand slot and you get tales wrapped in silver paper, put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious bits of advice that stick to your teeth like caramels. As far as that goes, I too could have myself invited to people's houses and they'd say among themselves that I was a "grand voyageur devant I'Eternel." Yes: the Mohamedans squat to pass water; instead of ergot, Hindu midwives use ground glass in cow dung; in Borneo when a woman has her period she spends three days and nights on the roof of her house. In Venice I saw burials in gondolas, Holy Week festivals in Seville, I saw the Passion Play at Oberammergau. Naturally, that's just a small sample of all I know: I could lean back in a chair and begin amusement:

"Do you know Jihlava, Madame? It's a curious little town in Moravia where I stayed in 1924."

And the judge who has seen so many cases would add at the end of my story:

"How true it is, Monsieur, how human it is. I had a case just like that at the beginning of my career. It was in 1902. I was deputy judge in Limoges . . ."

But I was bothered too much by that when I was young. Yet I didn't belong to a professional family. There are also amateurs. These are secretaries, office workers, shopkeepers, people who listen to others in cafes: around forty they feel swollen, with an experience they can't get rid of. Luckily they've made children on whom they can pass it off. They would like to make us believe that their past is not lost, that their memories are condensed, gently transformed into Wisdom. Convenient past! Past handed out of a pocket! little gilt books full of fine sayings. "Believe me, 68

I'm telling you from experience, all I know I've learned from life." Has life taken charge of their thoughts? They explain the new by the oldùand the old they explain by the older still, like those historians who turn a Lenin into a Russian Robespierre, and a Robespierre into a French Cromwell: when all is said and done, they have never understood anything at all. . . . You cap imagine a morose idleness behind their importance: they see the long parade of pretences, they yawn, they think there's nothing new under the sun. "Crazy as a loon"ùand Doctor Roge vaguely recalls other crazy loons, not remembering any one of them in particular. Now, nothing M. Achille can do will surprise us: hecause he's a crazy loon!

He is not one: he is afraid. What is he afraid of? When you want to understand something you stand in front of it, alone, without help: all the past in the world is of no use. Then it disappears and what you wanted to understand disappears with it.

General ideas are more flattering. And then professionals and even amateurs always end up by being right. Their wisdom prompts them to make the least possible noise, to live as little as possible, to let themselves be forgotten. Their best stories are about the rash and the original, who were chastised. Yes, that's how it happens and no one will say the contrary. Perhaps M. Achille's conscience is not easy. Perhaps he tells himself he wouldn't be there if he had heeded his father's advice or his elder sister's. The doctor has the right to speak: he has not wasted his life; he has known how to make himself useful. He rises calm and powerful, above this flotsam and jetsam; he is a rock.

Doctor Roge has finished his calvados. His great body relaxes and his eyelids droop heavily. For the first time I see his face without the eyes: like a cardboard mask, the kind they're selling in the shops today. His cheeks have a horrid pink colour. . . . The truth stares me in the face: this man is going to die soon. He surely knows; he need only look in the glass: each day he looks a little more like the corpse he will become. That's what their experience leads to, that's why I tell myself so often that they smell of death: it is their last defence. The doctor would like to believe, he would like to hide out the stark reality; that he is alone, without gain, without a past, with an intelligence which is clouded, a body which is disintegrating. For this reason he has carefully built up, furnished, and padded his nightmare compensation: he says he is making progress. Has he vacuums in his thoughts, moments when everything spins round in his head?It's because his judgment no longer has the impulse of youth. He no longer understands what he reads in books? It's because he's so far away from books now. He can't make love any more? But he has made love in the past. Having made love is much better than still making it: looking back, he compares, ponders. And this terrible corpse's face! To be able to stand the sight of it in the glass he makes himself believe that the lessons of experience are graven on it.

The doctor turns his head a little. His eyelids are half-open and he watches me with the red eyes of sleep. I smile at him. I would like this smile to reveal all that he is trying to hide from himself. That would give him a jolt if he could say to himself: "There's someone who knows I'm going to die!" But his eyelids droop: he sleeps. I leave, letting M. Achille watch over his slumber.

The rain has stopped, the air is mild, the sky slowly rolls up fine black images: it is more than enough to frame a perfect moment; to reflect these images, Anny would cause dark little tides to be born in our hearts. I don't know how to take advantage of the occasion: I walk at random, calm and empty, under this wasted sky.

Wednesday:

1 must not be afraid.

Thursday:

Four pages written. Then a long moment of happiness. Must not think too much about the value of History. You run the risk of being disgusted with it. Must not forget that de Rollebon now represents the only justification for my existence.

A week from today I'm going to see Anny.

Friday:

The fog was so thick on the Boulevard de la Redoute that I thought it wise to stick close to the walls of the Caserne; on my right, the headlights of cars chased a misty light before them and it was impossible to see the end of the pavement. There were people around me; I sometimes heard the sound of their steps or the low hum of their voices: but I saw no one. Once, a woman's face took shape somewhere at the height of my shoulder, but the fog engulfed it immediately; another time someone brushed by me breathing very heavily. I didn't know where I was going, I

was too absorbed: you had to go ahead with caution, feel the ground with the end of your foot and even stretch your hands ahead of you. I got no pleasure from this exercise. Yet I wasn't thinking about going back, I was caught. Finally, after half an hour, I noticed a bluish vapour in the distance. Using this as a guide, I soon arrived at the edge of a great glow; in the centre, piercing the fog with its lights, I recognized the Cafe Mably.

The Cafe Mably has twelve electric lights, but only two of them were on, one above the counter, the other on the ceiling. The only waiter there pushed me forcibly into a dark corner.

"This way, Monsieur, I'm cleaning up."

He had on a jacket, without vest or collar, with a white and violet striped shirt. He was yawning, looking at me sourly, running his fingers through his hair.

"Black coffee and rolls."

He rubbed his eyes without answering and went away. I was up to my eyes in shadow, an icy, dirty shadow. The radiator was surely not working.

I was not alone. A woman with a waxy complexion was sitting opposite me and her hands trembled unceasingly, sometimes smoothing her blouse, sometimes straightening her black hat. She was with a big blond man eating a brioche without saying a word. The silence weighed on me, I wanted to light my pipe but I would have felt uncomfortable attracting their attention by striking the match.

The telephone bell rings. The hands stopped: they stayed clutching at the blouse. The waiter took his time. He calmly finished sweeping before going to take off the receiver. "Hello, is that Monsieur Georges? Good morning, Monsieur Georges . . . Yes, Monsieur Georges . . . The patron isn't here . . . Yes, he should be down . . . Yes, but with a fog like this ... He generally comes down about eight . . . Yes, Monsieur Georges, I'll tell him. Good-bye, Monsieur Georges."

Fog weighed on the windows like a heavy curtain of grey velvet. A face pressed against the pane for an instant, disappeared.

The woman said plaintively:

"Tie up my shoe for me."

"It isn't untied," the man said without looking.

She grew agitated. Her hands moved along her blouse and over her neck like large spiders.

"Yes, yes, do up my shoe."He bent down, looking cross, and lightly touched her foot under the table.

"It's done."

She smiled with satisfaction. The man called the waiter.

"How much do I owe you?"

"How many brioches?" the waiter asked.

I had lowered my eyes so as not to seem to stare at them. After a few instants I heard a creaking and saw the hem of a skirt and two shoes stained with dry mud appear. The man's shoes followed, polished and pointed. They came towards me, stopped and turned sideways: he was putting on his coat. At that moment a hand at the end of a stiff arm moved downwards; hesitated a moment, then scratched at the skirt.

"Ready?" the man asked.

The hand opened and touched a large splash of mud on the right shoe, then disappeared.

He had picked up a suitcase near the coat rack. They went out, I saw them swallowed up in the fog.

"They're on the stage," the waiter told me as he brought me coffee.

"They play the entr'acte at the Cine-Palace. The woman blindfolds herself and tells the name and age of people in the audience. They're leaving today because it's Friday and the programme changes."

He went to get a plate of rolls from the table the people had just left.

"Don't bother."

I didn't feel inclined to eat those rolls.

"I have to turn off the light. Two lights for one customer at nine in the morning: the patron would give me hell."

Shadow floods the cafe. A feeble illumination, spattered with grey and brown, falls on the upper windows.

"I'd like to see M. Fasquelle."

I hadn't seen the old woman come in. A gust of cold air made me shiver.

"M. Fasquelle hasn't come down yet."

"Mme Florent sent me," she went on, "she isn't well. She won't be in today."

Mme Florent is the cashier, the red-haired girl.

"This weather," the old woman said, "is bad for her stomach."

The waiter put on an important air:

"It's the fog," he answered, "M. Fasquelle has the same trouble; I'm surprised he isn't down yet. Somebody telephoned for him. Usually he's down at eight."

Mechanically the old woman looked at the ceiling.

"Is he up there?"

"Yes, that's his room."

In a dragging voice, as if she were talking to herself, the old woman said:

"Suppose he's dead. . . ."

"Well! ..." The waiter's face showed lively indignation. "Well I never!"

Suppose he were dead. . . . This thought brushed by me. Just the kind of idea you get on foggy days.

The old woman left. I should have done the same: it was cold and dark. The fog filtered in under the door, it was going to rise slowly and penetrate everything. I could have found light and warmth at the library.

Again a face came and pressed against the window; it grimaced.

"You just wait," the waiter said angrily and ran out.

The face disappeared, I was alone. I reproached myself bitterly for leaving my room. The fog would have filled it by this time; I would be afraid to go back.

Behind the cashier's table, in the shadow, something cracked. It came from the private staircase: was the manager coming down at last? No: there was no one; the steps were cracking by themselves. M. Fasquelle was still sleeping. Or else he was dead, up there above my head. Found dead in bed one foggy morningùsub-heading: in the cafe, customers went on eating without suspecting.

But was he still in bed? Hadn't he fallen out, dragging the sheets with him, bumping his head against the floor?

I know M. Fasquelle very well; he sometimes asks after my health. A big, jolly fellow with a carefully combed beard: if he is dead it's from a stroke. He will be the colour of eggplant with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. The beard in the air, the neck violet under the frizzle of hair.

The private stairway is lost in darkness. I can hardly make out the newel post. This shadow would have to be crossed. The stairs would creak. Above, I would find the door of the room . . .

The body is there over my head. I would turn the switch: I would touch his warm skin to see ... I can't stand any more,I get up. If the waiter catches me on the stairs I'll tell him I heard a noise.