The Bachelors (24 page)

He opened a file which was bursting with clippings from the society columns of the
Figaro.

'Yes,' he said, 'I keep in touch. You have to!' And he showed him a des Mureaux in the wedding procession of a Macé de Thianville — which led to a long rigmarole. All these titled people from the society pages, whom he had never seen in his life and who, if the occasion arose, would have given him a glass of red wine in the kitchen like the plumber — or very nearly — were extraordinarily alive to him, almost familiar companions.

At last he came down from the clouds.

'However, enough of this. We can talk about it another time. Let's have a look at this health of yours.'

Now that it was no longer a question of trivialities but of the serious business that had brought him there, M. de Coantré suddenly felt that he was a fool, or must look a fool, and began to jabber incoherently. His forehead became moist with sweat. Any examining magistrate who had heard him would immediately have judged him guilty. He explained about his tiredness, and the attacks he had had that morning and when he had gone to pay his final visit to the house in the boulevard Arago. Examining him with a stethoscope, Gibout stuck his greasy, dandruff-spattered head under his nose, exuding a powerful odour of ill-kept male. Then he made Léon breathe in and out, and took his blood pressure.

'Everything in perfect order, Monsieur de Coantré,' he said at last. 'There's
nothing
wrong with you. I can give you an ab-so-lute-ly clean bill of health.'

'Nothing?'

'Let's say a bit of nervous hyperaesthesia, just to please you.?

M. de Coantré, if not exactly disappointed, was at least put out. That very moment, he had an intense and powerful conviction that Gibout was mistaken;
he
could feel that alien presence inside himself, that terrible presence of illness. But thinking that his supposed good health must make him seem in Gibout's eyes a simpleton or an alarmist, he began to complain of imaginary ailments in order to justify his visit, as a young penitent in the confessional will confess imaginary sins if he finds that his authentic ones are not interesting enough to be taken seriously. But to everything Gibout replied: 'Excellent! . . . absolutely normal. . .

'He's made up his mind,' the count said to himself, 'he's determined to contradict me. Nothing will make him let go.

Fancy being ill with a doctor who
won't hear
of your being ill! I'm in a fine mess! I can understand a military doctor automatically assuming that there's nothing wrong with you, since you're not paying him. But a doctor whom you're paying — that's a bit stiff!'

'So you won't give me a prescription?' he asked gloomily. There are doctors who dazzle their patients by prescribing all sorts of complicated things. Gibout dazzled them by prescribing nothing. And it is true that this is more subtle.

'No drugs, Monsieur de Coantré! No drugs! But every day, before dinner, a nice warm bath. Nothing more. You're lucky M. de Coëtquidan has had a bathroom installed at Fréville.. .' M. de Coantré realized that Gibout was under the impression he was staying at the château. He was too ashamed to undeceive him. Instead he asked him, in that flat tone of voice with which one asks a doctor for details of a treatment he has prescribed and which one has no intention of following: 'You couldn't tell me what temperature, more or less?'

'I said a
nice, warm
bath. In fact, everything you do for the next fortnight at least should be pleasant and enjoyable. Above all, no worries!'

M. de Coantré looked at Gibout as he had often looked at M. Octave when M. Octave was wandering happily in the sphere in which rich people move in. But there is another sphere, in which healthy people move, and it is in this sphere that doctors move.

'By the way, before you go,' said Gibout, 'I'll show you something that will interest you. The D'Hozier of 1738, with an account of the Coëtquidans. Imagine, the last time your uncle came to see me, a fortnight ago, I said to him: "M. de Coëtquidan, here's a tip from the horse's mouth. There's an odd copy of this volume now on sale at Champions — I've just seen it in the catalogue. And for next to nothing, two hundred francs. Only be quick about it." And do you know what he said? "If you think I'd ever waste two hundred francs on an old book!" And this same man who haggles over two hundred francs gives eight thousand francs to a charity he's never even heard of!'

'He gave eight thousand francs to a charity?'

'Didn't he tell you? Well, I never, that's real modesty for you! He said to me: "I can't understand this sudden desire to do good which came over me a fortnight ago. You haven't any pills against that? When it happened, I looked through my sister's list of charities and said to myself I'd send eight thousand francs to the one I came across when I opened the book at random. The one I hit upon was called L'Oeuvre des Berceaux Abandonnés, which is quite obviously a vast swindle like the rest of them. And I sent the eight thousand francs." And he added: "I know it's not a very French way to behave. More American really . .."'

'But. . . when did he do this?' M. de Coantré asked in a faint voice.

'He was here about a fortnight ago, and it was quite recent, because he said he'd had an answer from them the week before.'

'Forgive me,' said M. de Coantré, 'I don't feel well.. . .'

He had leaned forward in his chair, like someone trying to get a change of air.

'What's wrong?'

'. .. I'm sorry to be a nuisance ... but... I think I'm going to faint.. . .'

Seeing the dead pale face, Gibout leapt to his feet and said: 'Lie down on the sofa.' At the same moment, M. de Coantré stood up, twisted round a little, murmuring in a weak voice:

'I'm sorry ... I'm sorry ...' and Gibout caught him in his arms.

10

M.
DE
C
OANTRÉ
was shattered by the doctor's disclosure. M. Octave's action in throwing eight thousand francs out of the window when his nephew was destitute seemed to him monstrous and inexcusable. He was quite incapable of understanding the secret reasons for it, and if he had understood them he would not have accepted them; for they were too wounding to him. Nor was he the sort of man who would say: 'However unkind he has been to me, I've been equally unkind to lots of other people. And yet I'm not a bad sort. Therefore old Octave is probably a good man.' Such insights do not occur to average people: they must keep their illusions. Between M. de Coantré and M. de Coëtquidan something finally snapped. And so this long exercise in equilibrium — for any relationship between two human beings is a precarious balancing act — had broken down at last! And so the infinite pains that Léon had taken to maintain this balance had been a waste of effort! Shaving before going to visit Uncle Octave, remembering not to wear brown boots with his black suit, although his black boots hurt him and his brown ones did not — everything he had done of this kind had been in vain, and regret at having put himself out for nothing recurred insistently amongst all his other feelings, occasionally overriding them all. He felt in addition a genuine heartache, for the cupboard love he professed for his uncle included an element of real affection. We understand nothing of life until we have understood that it is one vast confusion.

'It's all too much for me,' he said to himself humbly. 'Yes, it's all too much for someone who is not too strong in the head.' Up to then he hadn't understood. 'Are they going to let me starve? After all, they won't let me starve.' Now he knew. They would let him starve.

In a single day he grew older and uglier. His face remained plump and youthful enough, but the dull, lack-lustre look in his eyes, with their dark circles and heavy pouches, made them look as if they did not belong to his face, like two holes made by a rat in an otherwise healthy cheese.

He had decided not to ask M. Octave for any more money. If M. Octave sent him some he would accept it; but he would not ask for any more. He had one hundred and ninety francs left. Remembering Mlle de Bauret's remark: 'If ever you need anything . . .', he wrote to her (in his more and more proconsular handwriting, firm, forceful, grandiloquent). But his only real hope lay with Mélanie. As we have seen, he had been brought up under the 'genteel' delusion that the People can always be relied on, that they are far more worthy of respect than the propertied classes. He imagined some sort of association with Mélanie — without (for very good reasons) going into any details — but at any rate cohabitation of a kind. But, since he could live nowhere more cheaply than at Fréville, he would have to stay there a little longer, at least until he received the money from his niece. Moreover, having told Chandelier that he would stay for a month, to leave now would be to run the risk of a row. The innkeeper might even insist on being paid for the full month. 'He doesn't like me, and I believe he's capable of anything,' he thought to himself, and fear made his eyelids twitch. 'I must do my utmost to keep on good terms with him until the end.'

'No mail?' he inquired in a scarcely audible voice as he arrived at the inn for dinner.

'No.'

Within a few seconds he had begun to tremble all over. It was grief that made him tremble. But once he began to eat the trembling ceased. As he ate, he felt more sharply than ever that he was surrounded by a circle of contempt and hatred and surreptitious looks. Because he was poor, because he was noble, because he was poor
and
noble, because he was a townsman, because he was different. A mystery to all, and therefore an affront. Irremediably apart. As remote from his fellow-countrymen as if he were in the depths of Amazonia. And yet there was one thing they had in common with him, mediocrity; they ought to have liked him, but the difference prevailed. He could feel, he could
see,
the insolence on the tips of their tongues, ready to spurt out at the slightest word or gesture on his part which might be misinterpreted, and he felt trapped. As in his wartime hospital, he was afraid to raise his eyes, and he smoked between courses to keep his courage up. He could not understand how everything had gone so well at Chatenay; but there was nothing to understand except that people and circumstances and he himself had changed (the basic difference was that at Chatenay he had had money, or could have had it). And again he thought of the contrast with Paris, where nobody took any notice of him. Clearly, Paris was the only place where one could be poor with impunity. In the country you had to be the master, the lord of the manor, or merely a bird of passage.

Passing through the village on the way home, he hunched his shoulders and kept his eyes lowered. Again this phobia about being
watched!

On his return from Saint-Pierre he had put back in his suitcase and trunk everything he had taken out of them — except what he needed for current use — as if to keep himself constantly reminded that he would soon be leaving. Besides, he was gratified in his feeble-minded way at having all his possessions collected together, capable of being taken in at a single glance; this unity assuaged him.

He had taken once more to his habit of spending the whole of the afternoon stretched out on his bed — gradually he was trying to resume all his Arago habits. But his rest was continually disturbed by the log fire: time and again he had to get up because a log rolled on to the floor, because sparks flew out, because the fire was going down or because it was blazing up too fiercely; or else the chimney was smoking, and no sooner had the room become pleasantly warm than the window had to be thrown wide open to get rid of the smoke. Ah! the rural life is dearly bought! Even in an old den like Arago he had worked out a day-to-day system whereby everything was in order. As he lay on the bed, his eyes remained glued to his suitcase and trunk, the symbols of departure. For all that M. Octave's 'wicked action' had yesterday cast a shadow over the whole Arago period, in his desperate need for something to look forward to he dreamed of his departure from Fréville for Paris, as long ago in the army, he had dreamed of leaving the army, as at Arago he had dreamed of leaving Arago, and even as at Chatenay, he had dreamed of leaving Chatenay, though this he would never have admitted. Such are the ways of men.

Two days after his visit to Gibout, he received at Chandelier's a letter post-marked Saint-Pierre-du-Buquet. Gibout! He imagined that the doctor must have had an attack of remorse, must have decided to take him seriously after his fainting fit, was writing to inquire about his health and prescribe some treatment. It was like a ray of sunlight. He opened the envelope and drew out an enormous piece of paper — two big sheets stuck together with glue. It was the genealogical tree of the Macé de Thianville family, which the doctor had entirely copied out by hand.

Next day he had another attack. Sitting in his chair as on the previous occasion, he stared all round him with a hunted look, his mouth open, like those shell-shocked soldiers who say to you: 'Take my hand '. As on the previous occasion, the need to do something, no matter what, drove him to get up and go and look for some eau-de-Cologne. He stood there sniffing the eau-de-Cologne and fanning himself with a piece of blotting-paper, thinking he was going to die any moment and accepting the idea without the slightest emotion. His pulse was imperceptible. His anguish became so intense that he put down the eau-de-Cologne and the blotting-paper. Now he did nothing but press his hands together — cracked and shrivelled like dead leaves — and stare at them; they had become the centre of his world. After a time he felt released, and stopped looking at his hands.

A phrase came into his head, which from then on haunted him: '... no more joking'. For some buffoon of stage or literature to react to a warning of tragedy with a 'Joke over' is understandable. But why M. de Coantré?

He made up his mind to go back to Gibout. His emotion seemed to him irresistible. This time he would be able to convince the doctor that he deserved attention.

At Chandelier's, he could not eat; the food would not go down. Sitting at the end of the room with his greatcoat over his shoulders (he was always cold) and his felt hat on his head (to distinguish himself less from his neighbours by being as plebeian as they), he watched these coarse yokels at the counter, with their shouts, their frightful healthiness, their paunches one longed to stick a knife into, their teeth which were so green they looked like so many rows of vegetables. The world became divided for him into two spheres: his own, and that of healthy people. He was so cold (his calves especially were cold) that he drank three small glasses of rum.