Tete-a-Tete (55 page)

56
.
This was the old
Liberátion,
not the current newspaper by the same name, established by Sartre.

57
.
TM,
July 1953, Sartre's editorial on the Rosenberg case.

58
.
S de B to NA, June 21, 1953.

59
.
NA to S de B, July 1953, undated, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir archives.

60
.
S de B to S, June 1953.

61
.
My interview with Claude Lanzmann, July 20, 2002.

62
.
Words,
trans. Irene Clephane (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1964), p. 36. I have combined a footnote and the text.

63
.
My interview with Claude Lanzmann, July 20, 2002.

64
.
Adieux,
p. 309. Sartre was not talking specifically about Evelyne in this 1974 conversation with Beauvoir, but since Evelyne was his tallest female companion, he presumably was thinking of her.

65
.
Sartre to Michelle Vian, Sept. 9, 1956, Michelle Vian private archives.

66
.
This was Michel Rybalka, who taped hours of conversation with Michelle Vian in July 1985.

67
.
Jacques Lanzmann,
Le Voleur de hasards,
pp. 94–105.

68
.
Through the character of Kean, an actor, Sartre meditates that the actor's curse is not to know who he really is; the actor “acts himself” every second.

69
.
Adieux,
p. 317.

70
.
“Entretien avec Claude Lanzmann.”

71
.
S de B to S, June 1 and June 8, 1954.

72
.
FC,
p. 318.

73
.
Sartre added that he had no idea at the time that the forced labor camps had continued to exist after Stalin's death. “Self Portrait at Seventy,”
Life/Situations(New York: Random House, 1977). (Trans. modified.)

74
.
FC,
p. 323.

75
.
S de B to NA, January 9, 1955.

CHAPTER TEN
:
EXILES AT HOME

1
.
S de B to NA, September 1, 1955.

2
.
S de B to NA, November 3, 1955.

3
.
FC,
p. 348.

4
.
Ibid., p. 352.

5
.
Jacqueline Piatier interview with Sartre, “A Long, Bitter, Sweet Madness,”
Encounter,
June 1964, pp. 61–63.

6
.
Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka interview with Sartre,
Le Monde,
May 14, 1971 (
The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre,
vol. 1, p. 571).

7
.
FC,
p. 358.

8
.
Claude Roy,
Libération,
June 19, 1957.

9
.
“People,”
Time,
July 2, 1956, p. 33.

10
.
FC,
p. 363.

11
.
CL to Michelle Vian, February 1955, Michelle Vian archives.

12
.
My interview with Michelle Vian, Apt, October 13, 2003.

13
.
“Après Budapest, Sartre parle,”
L'Express,
November 9, 1956. What Sartre said about the Marshall Plan is supported by U.S. State Department documents from this time, and was even reported in the U.S. press. On May 9, 1947, a
New York Times
article, “Administration Now Shifts Its Emphasis on Foreign Aid,” had this to say about the U.S. Government's change of rhetoric: “The Administration is not happy about the emotional response here and abroad to
the military and ideological aspects of the Truman Doctrine. Consequently, a conscious effort is being made now to emphasize the positive economic problems of reconstructing Europe rather than the military and ideological program of blocking Russian expansion and Soviet communism. The Administration still has the same objective. It has not wavered in its sincere belief that Soviet expansion and infiltration must be stopped.”

14
.
John Gerassi interview with Arlette Elkaïm Sartre, March 5, 1973. Beinecke Library, Yale University.

15
.
Interview with Arlette Elkaïm Sartre in
L'Express,
April 8–14, 1983.

16
.
Gerassi interview with Arlette Elkaïm Sartre, March 5, 1973.

17
.
Cau,
Croquis de mémoire,
pp. 241–42. I am paraphrasing Cau.

18
.
Gisèle Halimi,
Milk for the Orange Tree
(London: Quartet, 1990).

19
.
FC,
p. 466. Trans. modified [“Cette accablante année”].

20
.
Ibid., p. 398.

21
.
Beauvoir quotes these extracts from her journal in
FC,
pp. 404–463.

22
.
FC,
p. 459.

23
.
Ibid., p. 443.

24
.
S to Michelle Vian, July 6, 1958, Michelle Vian archives.

25
.
My interview with Michelle Vian, July 11 and 12, 2002.

26
.
Gerassi interview with Sartre, October 27, 1972.

27
.
FC,
pp. 455–56.

28
.
These days, Claude Lanzmann describes De Gaulle as “a great strategist, a great statesman, and a great writer into the bargain,” and wonders about the “mad romanticism” with which they were suffused at the time. “We were wrong,” he says. “I can't really understand how Sartre, in particular, got De Gaulle so wrong.” “Entretien avec Claude Lanzmann,”
Temps modernes,
nos. 531–33, Oct.–Dec. 1990.

29
.
FC,
p. 456.

30
.
Ibid., pp. 460–61.

31
.
Ibid., p. 465.

32
.
My interviews with Claude Lanzmann, Cap-Ferret, July 20, 2002 and Paris, January 27, 2004.

33
.
John Huston,
An Open Book
(1959) (New York: Knopf, 1980), p. 295.

34
.
Gerassi interview with Arlette Elkaïm Sartre, March 5, 1973.

35
.
FC,
pp. 496–97. Camus was driving back from the south with Michel Gallimard and Gallimard's wife and daughter. Michel Gallimard, the driver, died five days later, in the hospital. The women, who were sitting in the backseat, survived.

36
.
Camus, who had grown up in poverty in Algeria, saw the only hope as Franco-Arab reconciliation. He condemned violence on both sides and warned that the FLN was authoritarian and not prepared to compromise. Sartre was also wary of the FLN. However, for him, the only response to the violence of colonialism was violence.

37
.
“Albert Camus,”
Situations,
p. 109.

38
.
Sartre, “Self-Portrait at Seventy.”

39
.
Nelson Algren,
Who Lost an American?
(New York: Macmillan, 1963), p. 118.

40
.
My interview with Michelle Vian, July 11 and 12, 2002.

41
.
I have only Michelle Vian's word to go on that Sartre was prepared to have a child with her. But since all her other statements appear to be correct, and since she gave the physicians' names, I have no reason to disbelieve her. Mme Weill-Hallé became famous for founding family planning in France. Beauvoir wrote a preface to her 1960 book,
La Grand'Peur d'aimer.
The surgeon who Michelle Vian says performed the operation was Dr. Pierre Simon, famous for his writing on “birth without pain.”

42
.
FC,
p. 503.

43
.
Ibid., p. 506.

44
.
S de B to NA, August 26, 1960 and September 23, 1960.

45
.
S de B to NA, October 29, 1960. Sartre wrote to her, and gave her a long list of books to read, mostly on aspects of Marxism. Cristina Tavares (1936–1992) would become an important socialist political figure in the Recife area, and also a militant feminist, before dying of cancer in her fifties.

46
.
Cohen-Solal quotes this statement in
Sartre,
p. 422.

47
.
Gisèle Halimi,
Djamila Boupacha
(Paris: Gallimard, 1962).

48
.
Cohen-Solal,
Sartre,
p. 429.

49
.
Liliane Siegel,
In the Shadow of Sartre
(London: Collins, 1990), p. 24.

50
.
Ibid., p. 18.

51
.
S de B to NA, April 14, 1961.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
:
WHITE NIGHTS
,
VODKA
,
AND TEARS

1
.
There had been earlier moments of “thaw”—in 1954 and 1959, both short-lived. The term owed its name to Ehrenburg's novel
The Thaw,
published in
Novy Mir
in the spring of 1954.

2
.
In the next few years, Zonina would translate Sartre's play
The Flies
and Beauvoir's novel
Les Belles Images,
and would co-translate Sartre's autobiography,
Words,
which he dedicated to her, “Madame Z.” Sartre's plays
Nekrassov
and
The Respectful Prostitute
had already been put on in Moscow. In the sixties, he had large sums of rubles from Russian translations of his work, but of course he could spend them only in the USSR.

3
.
FC,
p. 651.

4
.
My interview with Masha Zonina, Paris, July 16, 2002.

5
.
ASAD,
p. 286.

6
.
Sartre to Zonina, July 2, 1962, Macha Zonina private archives. The letters rarely contain a date, since they were generally written over several weeks.

7
.
See Michel Antoine Burnier,
L'Adieu à Sartre
(Paris: Plon, 2000), and Ewa Bérard-Zarzycka, “Sartre et Beauvoir en U.R.S.S.,”
Commentaire
14, no. 53 (Spring 1991). Neither writer claims that Zonina was a KGB agent herself, but they both wonder about the extent of her connection with the KGB.

8
.
Gerassi interview with Sartre, October 27, 1972.

9
.
Zonina's report after Sartre's June 1–24 visit is among the Soviet Writers Union files in the Moscow State Archives of Art and Literature. Ewa Bérard-Zarzycka quotes several of her reports in “Sartre et Beauvoir en U.R.S.S,” in
Commentaire
(my trans.).

10
.
It is now generally accepted that the Peace Movement, established in Paris in April 1949, and directed from Moscow, was an important vehicle for Soviet propaganda. While preaching peace all around the world, the Soviets were scrambling to build up their own weaponry. In 1975, Sartre told Michel Contat: “I continue to think that during the years of the Cold War the Communists were right. The USSR—in spite of all the mistakes we know it made—was nevertheless being persecuted. It was not yet in a position to hold its own in a war against America, and so it wanted peace” (Sartre, “Self-Portrait at Seventy”).

11
.
Lena Zonina's translation of
Words
was published in
Novy Mir
in late 1964.

12
.
My interview with Gilbert and Marie-Chantal Dagron, Paris, October 6, 2003.

13
.
Beauvoir's account of their June 1962 trip, in
Force of Circumstance
(1963) was largely positive. Her report on their later trips to the USSR in
All Said and Done
(1972) was far less so.

14
.
When John Gerassi asked Sartre, “Did they know about the affair in USSR?” Sartre answered, “I think they knew from the beginning” (interview, October 27, 1972).

15
.
My interview with Lucia Cathala, Paris, July 24, 2002.