The Counterfeiters (10 page)

What is the station that has just flashed past? Asnières. He puts the note-book back in his suit-case. But, decidedly, the thought of Passavant vexes him. He takes the note-book out again and adds:

The work of art, as far as Passavant is concerned, is not so much an end as a means. The artistic convictions which he displays are asserted with so much vehemence merely because they lack depth; no secret exigence of his temperament necessitates them; they are evoked by the passing hour; their
mot d’ordre
is opportunism.

The Horizontal Bar!
The things that soonest appear out of date are those that at first strike us as most modern. Every concession, every affectation is the promise of a wrinkle. But it is by these means that Passavant pleases the young. He snaps his fingers at the future. It is the generation of to-day that he is speaking to—which is certainly better than speaking to that of yesterday. But as what he writes is addressed only to that younger generation, it is in danger of disappearing with it. He is perfectly aware of this and does not build his hopes on surviving. This is the reason that he defends himself so fiercely, and that, not only when he is attacked, but at the slightest restrictions of the critics. If he felt that his work was lasting he would leave it to defend itself and would not so continually seek to justify it. More than that, misunderstanding, injustice, would rejoice him.
So much the more food for to-morrow’s critics to use their teeth upon!

He looks at his watch: 11:35. He ought to have arrived by now. Curious to know if by any impossible chance Olivier will be at the station to meet him? He hasn’t the slightest expectation of it. How can he even suppose that his post-card has come to Olivier’s notice—that post-card on which he informed Olivier’s parents of his return, and incidentally, carelessly, absent-mindedly to all appearance, mentioned the day and hour of his arrival … as one takes a pleasure in stalking—in setting a trap for fate itself.

The train is stopping. Quick! A porter! No! His suitcase is not very heavy, nor the cloak-room very far.… Even supposing he were there, would they recognize each other in all this crowd? They have seen so little of each other. If only he hasn’t grown out of recognition!… Ah! Great Heavens! Can that be he?

We should have nothing to deplore of all that happened later if only Edouard’s and Olivier’s joy at meeting had been more demonstrative; but they both had a singular incapacity for gauging their credit in other people’s hearts and minds; this now paralysed them; so that each, believing his emotion to be unshared, absorbed in his own joy, and half ashamed at finding it so great, was completely preoccupied by trying to hide its intensity from the other.

It was for this reason that Olivier, far from helping Edouard’s joy by telling him with what eagerness he had come to meet him, thought fit to speak of some job or other which he had had to do in the neighbourhood that very morning, as if to excuse himself for having come. His conscience, scrupulous to excess, cunningly set about persuading him that he was perhaps in Edouard’s way. The lie was hardly out of his mouth when he blushed. Edouard surprised the blush, and as he had at first seized Olivier’s arm and passionately pressed it, he thought (scrupulous he, too) that it was this that had made him blush.

He had begun by saying:

“I tried to force myself to believe that you wouldn’t come, but in reality I was certain that you would.”

Then it came over him that Olivier thought these words presumptuous. When he heard him answer in an off-hand way: “I had a job to do in this very neighbourhood,” he dropped Olivier’s arm and his spirits fell from
their heights. He would have liked to ask Olivier whether he had understood that the post-card which he had addressed to his parents, had been really intended for him; as he was on the point of putting the question, his heart failed him. Olivier, who was afraid of boring Edouard or of being misunderstood if he spoke of himself, kept silent. He looked at Edouard and was astonished at the trembling of his lip; then he dropped his eyes at once. Edouard was both longing for the look and afraid that Olivier would think him too old. He kept rolling a bit of paper nervously between his fingers. It was the ticket he had just been given at the cloak-room, but he did not think of that.

“If it was his cloak-room ticket,” thought Olivier, as he watched him crumple it up and throw it absent-mindedly away, “he wouldn’t throw it away like that.” And he glanced round for a second to see the wind carry it off along the pavement far behind them. If he had looked longer he might have seen a young man pick it up. It was Bernard, who had been following them ever since they had left the station.… In the mean while Olivier was in despair at finding nothing to say to Edouard, and the silence between them became intolerable.

“When we get opposite Condorcet,” he kept repeating to himself, “I shall say, ‘I must go home now; good-bye.’ ”

Then, when they got opposite the Lycée, he gave himself till as far as the corner of the Rue de Provence. But Edouard, on whom the silence was weighing quite as heavily, could not endure that they should part in this way. He drew his companion into a café. Perhaps the port wine which he ordered would help them to get the better of their embarrassment.

They drank to each other.

“Good luck to you!” said Edouard, raising his glass. “When is the examination?”

“In ten days.”

“Do you feel ready?”

Olivier shrugged his shoulders. “One never knows. If one doesn’t happen to be in good form on the day …”

He didn’t dare answer “yes,” for fear of seeming conceited. He was embarrassed, too, because he wanted and yet was afraid to say “thou” to Edouard. He contented himself by giving his sentences an impersonal turn, so as to avoid at any rate saying “you”; and by so doing he deprived Edouard of the opportunity of begging him to say “thou”—which Edouard longed for him to do and which he remembered well enough he
had
done a few days before his leaving for England.

“Have you been working?”

“Pretty well, but not as well as I might have.”

“People who work well always think they might work better,” said Edouard rather pompously.

He said it in spite of himself and then thought his sentence ridiculous.

“Do you still write poetry?”

“Sometimes … I badly want a little advice.” He raised his eyes to Edouard. “Your advice,” he wanted to say—“
thy
advice.” And his look, in default of his voice, said it so plainly that Edouard thought he was saying it out of deference—out of amiability. But why should he have answered—and so brusquely too …?

“Oh, one must go to oneself for advice, or to companions of one’s own age. One’s elders are no use.”

Olivier thought: “I didn’t ask him. Why is he protesting?”

Each of them was vexed with himself for not being able to utter a word that didn’t sound curt and stiff; and each of them, feeling the other’s embarrassment and irritation, thought himself the cause and object of them. Such interviews lead to no good unless something comes to the rescue. Nothing came.

Olivier had begun the morning badly. When, on waking up, he had found that Bernard was no longer beside him, that he had left him without saying good-bye, his heart had been filled with unhappiness; though he had forgotten it for an instant in the joy of seeing Edouard, it now surged up in him anew like a black wave and submerged every other thought in his mind. He would have liked to talk about Bernard, to tell Edouard everything and anything, to make him interested in his friend.

But Edouard’s slightest smile would have wounded him; and as the passionate and tumultuous feelings which were shaking him could not have been expressed without the risk of seeming exaggerated, he kept silence. He felt his features harden; he would have liked to fling himself into Edouard’s arms and cry. Edouard misunderstood this silence of Olivier’s and the look of sternness on his face; he loved him far too much to be able to behave with any ease. He hardly dared look at Olivier, whom he longed to take in his arms and fondle like a child, and when he met his eyes and saw their dull and lifeless expression:

“Of course!” he said to himself. “I bore him—I bore him to death. Poor child! He’s just waiting for a word from me to escape.” And irresistibly Edouard said the word—out of sheer pity: “You’d better be off now. Your people are expecting you for lunch, I’m sure.”

Olivier, who was thinking the same things, misunderstood in the same way. He got up in a desperate hurry and held out his hand. At least he wanted to say to Edouard: “Shall I see you—thee—again soon? Shall we see each other again soon?” … Edouard was waiting for these words. Nothing came but a commonplace “Good-bye!”

The sun woke Bernard. He rose from his bench with a violent headache. His gallant courage of the morning had left him. He felt abominably lonely and his heart was swelling with something brackish and bitter which he would not call unhappiness, but which brought the tears to his eyes. What should he do? Where should he go?… If his steps turned towards St. Lazare Station at the time that he knew Olivier was due there, it was without any definite purpose and merely with the wish to see his friend again. He reproached himself for having left so abruptly that morning; perhaps Olivier had been hurt?… Was he not the creature in the world he liked best?… When he saw him arm in arm with Edouard a peculiar feeling made him follow the pair and at the same time not show himself; painfully conscious of being
de trop
, he would yet have liked to slip in between them. He thought Edouard looked charming; only a little taller than Olivier and with a scarcely less youthful figure. It was he whom he made up his mind to address; he would wait until Olivier left him. But address him? Upon what pretext?

It was at this moment that he caught sight of the little bit of crumpled paper as it escaped from Edouard’s hand. He picked it up, saw that it was a cloak-room ticket … and, by Jove, here was the wished-for pretext!

He saw the two friends go into a café, hesitated a moment in perplexity, and then continued his monologue:

“Now a normal fathead would have nothing better to do than to return this paper at once,” he said to himself.

as I have heard Hamlet remark. Bernard, Bernard, what thought is this that is tickling you? It was only yesterday that you were rifling a drawer. On what path are you entering? Consider, my boy, consider.… Consider that the cloak-room attendant who took Edouard’s luggage will be gone to his lunch at 12 o’clock, and that there will be another one on duty. And didn’t you promise your friend to stick at nothing?”

He reflected, however, that too much haste might spoil everything. The attendant might be surprised into thinking this haste suspicious; he might consult the entry book and think it unnatural that a piece of luggage deposited in the cloak-room a few minutes before twelve, should be taken out immediately after. And besides, suppose some passer-by, some busy-body, had seen him pick up the bit of paper.… Bernard forced himself to walk to the Place de la Concorde without hurrying—in the time it would have taken another person to lunch. It is quite usual, isn’t it, to put one’s luggage in the cloak-room whilst one is lunching and to take it out immediately after.… His headache had gone. As he was passing by a restaurant terrace, he boldly took a toothpick from one of the little bundles that were set out on the tables, and stood nibbling it at the cloak-room counter, in order to give himself the air of having lunched. He was lucky to have in his favour his good looks, his well-cut clothes, his distinction, the frankness of his eyes and smile, and that indefinable something in the whole appearance which denotes those who have been brought up in comfort
and want for nothing. (But all this gets rather draggled by sleeping on benches.) …

He had a horrible turn when the attendant told him there were ten centimes to pay. He had not a single sou left. What should he do? The suit-case was there, on the counter. The slightest sign of hesitation would give the alarm—so would his want of money. But the demon is watching over him; he slips between Bernard’s anxious fingers, as they go searching from pocket to pocket with a pretence of feigned despair, a fifty-centime bit, which had lain forgotten since goodness knows when in his waistcoat pocket. Bernard hands it to the attendant. He has not shown a sign of his agitation. He takes up the suit-case, and in the simplest, honestest fashion pockets the forty centimes change. Heavens! How hot he is! Where shall he go now? His legs are beginning to fail him and the suit-case feels heavy. What shall he do with it?… He suddenly remembers that he has no key. No! No! Certainly not! He will not break open the lock; what the devil, he isn’t a thief!… But if he only knew what was in it. His arm is aching and he is perspiring with the heat. He stops for a moment and puts his burden down on the pavement. Of course he has every intention of returning the wretched thing to its owner; but he would like to question it first. He presses the lock at a venture.… Oh miracle! The two shells open and disclose a pearl—a pocket-book, which in its turn discloses a bundle of bank-notes. Bernard seizes the pearl and shuts up the oyster.

And now that he has the wherewithal—quick! a hotel. He knows of one close by in the Rue d’Amsterdam. He is dying of hunger. But before sitting down to table, he must put his suit-case in safety. A waiter carries it upstairs before him; three flights; a passage; a door which he locks upon his treasure. He goes down again.

Sitting at table in front of a beefsteak, Bernard did not dare examine the pocket-book. (One never knows
who may be watching you.) But his left hand amorously caressed it, lying snug in his inside pocket.

“How to make Edouard understand that I’m not a thief—that’s the trouble. What kind of fellow is Edouard? Perhaps the suit-case may shed a little light upon that. Attractive—so much is certain. But there are heaps of attractive fellows who have no taste for practical joking. If he thinks his suit-case has been stolen, no doubt he’ll be glad to see it again. If he’s the least decent he’ll be grateful to me for bringing it back to him. I shall easily rouse his interest. Let’s eat the sweet quickly and then go upstairs and examine the situation. Now for the bill and a soul-stirring tip for the waiter.”