The Counterfeiters (32 page)

“Oh! well, if you put that in your essay, it wasn’t against me that you were saying it.… I’m glad of that.”

He spoke as though he were vexed—not at all in the tone he would have liked.

“But it
is
against you that I am saying it now,” retorted Bernard.

These words cut straight at Olivier’s heart. Bernard had certainly not said them with a hostile intention, but how else could they be taken? Olivier was silent. Between Bernard and him a gulf was yawning. He tried to think of some question to fling from one side of the gulf to the other which might reestablish the contact. He tried, without much hope of succeeding. “Doesn’t he understand how miserable I am?” he said to himself, and he grew more miserable still. He did not have to force back his tears, perhaps, but he said to himself that it was enough to make anyone cry. It was his own fault, too; his meeting with Bernard would have seemed less sad if he had looked forward to it with less joy. When
two months before he had hurried off to meet Edouard, it had been the same thing. It would always be the same thing, he said to himself. He wanted to go away—anywhere—by himself—to chuck Bernard—to forget Passavant, Edouard.… An unexpected meeting suddenly interrupted these melancholy thoughts.

A few steps in front of them, going up the Boulevard Saint-Michel, along which he and Bernard were walking, Olivier caught sight of his young brother George. He seized Bernard’s arm, and, turning sharply on his heel, drew him hurriedly along with him.

“Do you think he saw us?… My people don’t know I’m back.”

Young George was not alone. Léon Ghéridanisol and Philippe Adamanti were with him. The conversation of the three boys was exceedingly animated; but George’s interest in it did not prevent him from keeping “his eyes skinned,” as he said. In order to listen to the children’s talk we will leave Olivier and Bernard for a moment; especially since our two friends have gone into a restaurant, and are for the moment more occupied in eating than in talking—to Olivier’s great relief.

“Well then,
you
do it,” says Phiphi to George.

“Oh, he’s got the dithers! He’s got the dithers!” retorts George, putting what cold contempt he can into his voice, so as to goad Philippe to action. Then says Ghéridanisol with calm superiority:

“Look here, my lambs, if you aren’t game, you had better say so at once. I shan’t have any difficulty in finding fellows with a little more pluck than you. Here! Give it back!”

He turns to George, who is holding a small coin in his tight-shut hand.

“I’ll do it!” cries George, in a sudden burst of courage. “Won’t I just! Come on!” (They are opposite a tobacco shop.)

“No,” says Léon; “we’ll wait for you at the corner. Come along, Phiphi.”

A moment later George comes out of the shop; he has a packet of so-called “de luxe” cigarettes in his hand and offers them to his friends.

“Well?” asks Phiphi anxiously.

“Well, what?” replies George with an air of affected indifference, as if what he has just done has suddenly become so natural that it wasn’t worth mentioning.

But Philippe insists:

“Did you pass it?”

“Good Lord! Didn’t I?”

“And nobody said anything?”

George shrugged his shoulders:

“What on earth should they say?”

“And they gave you back the change?”

This time George doesn’t even deign to answer. But as Philippe, still a little sceptical and fearful, insists again: “Show us,” George pulls the money out of his pocket. Philippe counts—the seven francs are there right enough. He feels inclined to ask: “Are you sure
they
aren’t false too?” But he refrains.

George had given one franc for the false coin. It had been agreed that the money should be divided between them. He holds out three francs to Ghéridanisol. As for Phiphi, he shan’t have a farthing; at the outside a cigarette; it’ll be a lesson to him.

Encouraged by this first success, Phiphi is now anxious to try for himself. He asks Léon to sell him another coin. But Léon considers Phiphi a muff, and in order to screw him up to the right pitch, he affects contempt for his former cowardice and pretends to hold back. He had only to make up his mind sooner; they could very well do without him. Besides which, Léon thinks it imprudent to risk another attempt to close upon the first. And then it’s too late now. His cousin Strouvilhou is expecting him to lunch.

Ghéridanisol is not such a duffer that he can’t pass his false coins by himself; but his big cousin’s instructions are that he is to get himself accomplices. He goes off now to give him an account of his successfully performed mission.

“The kids we want, you see, are those who come of good families, because then if rumours get about, their parents do all they can to stifle them.” (It is Cousin Strouvilhou who is talking in this way, while the two are having lunch together.) “Only with this system of selling the coins one by one, they get put into circulation too slowly. I’ve got fifty-two boxes containing twenty coins each, to dispose of. They must be sold for twenty francs a box; but not to anyone, you understand. The best thing would be to form an association to which no one should be admitted who didn’t furnish pledges. The kids must be made to compromise themselves, and hand over something or other which will give us a hold over their parents. Before letting them have the coins, they must be made to understand that—oh! without frightening them. One must never frighten children. You told me Molinier’s father was a magistrate? Good. And Adamanti’s father?”

“A senator.”

“Better still. You’re old enough now to grasp that there’s no family without some skeleton or other in the cupboard, which the people concerned are terrified of having discovered. The kids must be set hunting; it’ll give them something to do. Family life as a rule is so boring! And then it’ll teach them to observe, to look about them. It’s quite simple. Those who contribute nothing will get nothing. When certain parents understand that they are in our hands, they’ll pay a high price for our silence. What the deuce! we have no intention of blackmailing them; we are honest folk. We merely want to have a hold on them. Their silence for ours.
Let them keep silent and make other people keep silent, and then we’ll keep silent too. Here’s a health to them!”

Strouvilhou filled two glasses. They drank to each other.

“It’s a good—it’s even an indispensable thing,” he went on, “to create ties of reciprocity between citizens; by so doing societies are solidly established. We all hold together, good Lord!
We
have a hold on the children, who have a hold on their parents, who have a hold on us. A perfect arrangement. Twig?”

Léon twigged admirably. He chuckled.

“That little George …” he began.

“Well, what about him? That little George …?”

“Molinier. I think he’s pretty well screwed up. He has laid his hands on some letters to his father from an Olympia chorus girl.”

“Have you seen them?”

“He showed them to me. I overheard him talking to Adamanti. I think they were pleased at my listening to them; at any rate they didn’t hide from me; I had already taken steps and treated them to a little entertainment in your style, to inspire them with confidence. George said to Phiphi (to give him a stunner): ‘My father’s got a mistress.’ Upon which, Phiphi, not to be outdone, answered: ‘My father’s got two.’ It was idiotic and really nothing to make a fuss about; but I went up to George and said: ‘How do you know?’ ‘I’ve seen some letters,” he answered. I pretended I didn’t believe him and said: ‘Rubbish!’ … Well, I went on at him, until at last he said he had got them with him; he pulled them out of a big lettercase and showed them to me.”

“Did you read them?”

“I didn’t have time to. I only saw they were all in the same handwriting; one of them began: ‘My darling old ducky.’ ”

“And signed?”

“ ‘Your little white mousie.’ I asked George how
he had got hold of them. He grinned and pulled out of his trouser pocket an enormous bunch of keys.… ‘To fit every drawer in the universe,’ said he.”

“And what did Master Phiphi say?”

“Nothing. I think he was jealous.”

“Would George give you the letters?”

“If necessary I’ll get him to. I don’t want to take them from him. He’ll give them if Phiphi joins in, too. They each of them egg the other on.”

“That’s what goes by the name of emulation. And you don’t see anyone else at the school?”

“I’ll look about.”

“One thing more I wanted to say.… I think there must be a little boy called Boris amongst the boarders. You’re to leave him alone”; he paused a moment and then added in a whisper: “for the moment.”

Olivier and Bernard are seated at a table in one of the Boulevard restaurants. Olivier’s unhappiness melts like hoarfrost in the warmth of his friend’s smile. Bernard avoids pronouncing Passavant’s name; Olivier feels it; a secret instinct warns him; but the name is on the tip of his tongue; he must speak, come what may.

“Yes; I didn’t let my people know we were coming back so soon. This evening the Argonauts are giving a dinner. Passavant particularly wants me to be present. He wishes our new review to be on good terms with its elder and not to set up as a rival.… You ought to come; and I tell you what … you ought to bring Edouard.… Perhaps not to dinner, because one’s got to be invited, but immediately after. It’s to be in the upstairs room of the Taverne du Panthéon. The principal members of the
Argonaut
staff will be there and a good many of our own
Vanguard
contributors. Our first number is nearly ready; but, I say, why didn’t you send me anything?”

“Because I hadn’t anything ready,” he answers rather curtly.

Olivier’s voice becomes almost imploring:

“I put your name down next to mine in the list of contents.… We could wait a little, if necessary … no matter what; anything.… You had almost promised.”

It grieves Bernard to hurt his friend; but he hardens himself:

“Look here, old boy, I had better tell you at once—I’m afraid I shouldn’t hit it off with Passavant very well.”

“But it’s I who am the editor. He leaves me perfectly free.”

“And then I dislike the idea of sending you
no matter what;
I don’t want to write
no matter what
.”

“I said
no matter what
, because I knew that no matter what you wrote would be good … that it would never really be
no matter what
.”

He doesn’t know what to say. He is just floundering. If he cannot feel his friend beside him, all his interest in the review vanishes. It had been such a delightful dream, this of making their début together.

“And then, old fellow, if I’m beginning to know what I don’t want to do. I don’t know yet what I
do
want to do. I don’t even know whether I shall write.”

This declaration fills Olivier with consternation. But Bernard goes on:

“Nothing that I could write easily tempts me. It’s because I can turn my sentences easily that I have a detestation of well-turned sentences. Not that I like difficulty for its own sake; but I really do think that writers of the present time take things a bit too easy. I don’t know enough about other people’s lives to write a novel; and I haven’t yet had a life of my own. Poetry bores me. The alexandrine is worn threadbare; the
vers
libre
is formless. The only poet who satisfies me nowadays is Rimbaud.”

“That’s exactly what I say in our manifesto.”

“Then it’s not worth while my repeating it. No, old boy; no; I don’t know whether I shall write. It sometimes seems to me that writing prevents one from living, and that one can express oneself better by acts than by words.”

“Works of art are acts that endure,” ventured Olivier timidly; but Bernard was not listening.

“That’s what I admire most of all in Rimbaud—to have preferred life.”

“He made a mess of his own.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Oh! really, old boy! …”

“One can’t judge other people’s lives from the outside. But anyhow, let’s grant he was a failure; with ill-luck, poverty, illness to bear.… Even so, I envy him his life; yes, I envy it more—even with its sordid ending—more than the life of …”

Bernard did not finish his sentence; on the point of naming an illustrious contemporary, he hesitated between too many of them. He shrugged his shoulders and went on:

“I have a confused feeling in myself of extraordinary aspirations, surgings, stirrings, incomprehensible agitations, which I don’t want to understand—which I don’t even want to observe, for fear of preventing them. Not so long ago, I was constantly talking to myself. Now, even if I wanted to, I shouldn’t be able to. It was a mania that come to an end suddenly, without my even being aware of it. I think that this habit of soliloquizing—of inward dialogue, as our professor used to call it—necessitated a kind of division of the personality, which I ceased to be capable of, the day that I began to love someone else better than myself.”

“You mean Laura,” said Olivier. “Do you still love her as much as ever?”

“No,” said Bernard; “more than ever. I think it’s the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing; and that’s what distinguishes it from friendship.”

“Friendship, too, can grow less,” said Olivier sadly.

“I think that the margins of friendship aren’t so wide.”

“I say … you won’t be angry if I ask you something?”

“Try.”

“I don’t want to make you angry.”

“If you keep your questions to yourself, you’ll make me more angry still.”

“I want to know whether you feel … desire for Laura.”

Bernard suddenly became very grave.

“If it weren’t you …” he began. “Well, old boy, it’s a curious thing that’s happened to me: ever since I have come to know her, all my desires have gone; I have none left at all. You remember in the old days how I used to be all fire and flame for twenty women at once whom I happened to pass by in the street (and that’s the very thing that prevented me from choosing any one of them); well, now it seems to me that I shall never be touched again by any other form of beauty than hers; that I shall never be able to love any other forehead than hers; her lips, her eyes. But what I feel for her is veneration; when I am with her every carnal thought seems an impiety. I think I was mistaken about myself, and that in reality I am very chaste by nature. Thanks to Laura, my instincts have been sublimated. I feel I have within me great unemployed forces. I should like to make them take up service. I envy the Carthusian who bends his pride to the rule of his order; the person
to whom one says: “I count upon you.” I envy the soldier.… Or rather, no; I envy no one; but the turbulence I feel within me oppresses me and my aspiration is to discipline it. It’s like steam inside me; it may whistle as it escapes (that’s poetry), put in motion wheels and pistons; or even burst the engine. Do you know the act which I sometimes think would express me best? It’s … Oh! I know well enough I shan’t kill myself; but I understand Dmitri Karamazof perfectly when he asks his brother if he understands a person killing himself out of enthusiasm, out of sheer excess of life … just
bursting
.”