The Age of Reason Page 10

  Ivich began to laugh, but not with the expression that Mathieu expected.

  ‘I suppose you think it funny that he should have begun as a Sunday painter,’ asked Mathieu, uneasily.

  ‘It wasn’t him I was thinking about.’

  ‘What was it, then?’

  ‘I was wondering whether people ever talked about Sunday writers, too.’

  Sunday writers: those petty bourgeois who wrote a short story, or five or six poems, every year to inject a little idealism into their lives. For health reasons. Mathieu shuddered.

  ‘Do you mean that I’m one?’ he asked gaily. ‘Well, it may lead to something. Perhaps I shall go off to Tahiti one of these days.’

  Ivich turned towards him, and stared him full in the face. She looked malevolent and nervous; she was doubtless afraid of her own audacity.

  ‘That would surprise me,’ she said in a toneless voice.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ said Mathieu. ‘Perhaps not to Tahiti, but to New York. I should much like to go to America.’

  Ivich tugged at her curls.

  ‘I daresay,’ she said, ‘as one of a team... with other professors.’

  Mathieu eyed her in silence, and she went on: ‘I may be wrong... I can very well imagine you delivering a lecture in a University to American students, but I can’t see you on the deck of a ship among a crowd of emigrants. Perhaps it’s because you’re French.’

  ‘You think I need a luxury suite?’ he asked with a blush.

  ‘No,’ said Ivich curtly, ‘a second-class cabin.’

  He swallowed rather painfully. ‘I should like to see her on a ship’s deck among a crowd of emigrants — she’d never stand it’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘however that may be, I think it’s odd of you to be so sure that I couldn’t go. Besides, you’re wrong, I used to want to very much in times gone by. I never did, in fact, because I thought it foolish. And it’s especially comic that this should have come up in connexion with Gauguin of all people, who remained a clerk until he was forty.’

  Ivich burst into an ironic laugh.

  ‘Don’t you believe it?’ asked Mathieu.

  ‘Of course... if you say so. Anyway, you’ve only got to look at his portrait...’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, there can’t be many clerks of his sort. He had a sort of... lost look.’

  Mathieu recalled a heavy face with an enormous jowl. Gauguin had lost his human dignity, and had done so willingly.

  ‘I see,’ said he. ‘You mean the big picture at the end of the room. He was very ill at that time.’

  Ivich smiled contemptuously. ‘I mean the small picture, while he was still young. He looks capable of anything.’ She gazed into vacancy with a rather drawn expression, and Mathieu felt for the second time the bite of jealousy.

  ‘Obviously, if that’s what you mean, I’m not a lost man.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Ivich.

  ‘I don’t see why that should be an asset, anyway,’ said he, ‘or it may be because I don’t understand what you mean.’

  ‘Oh well, let’s drop the subject.’

  ‘Of course. You’re always like that, you find fault with people in an indirect sort of way and then refuse to explain yourself — it’s too easy.’

  ‘I’m not finding fault with anyone,’ she said indifferently.

  Mathieu halted and looked at her. Ivich stopped too, with an air of irritation. She shifted from one foot to the other, and evaded Mathieu’s eye.

  ‘Ivich, you must tell me what you meant.’

  ‘By what?’ she asked with astonishment.

  ‘When you spoke of a man being “lost”.’

  ‘Are we still discussing that?’

  ‘It may seem silly,’ said Mathieu, ‘but I should like to know what you meant.’

  Ivich began to pull her hair again; this was exasperating.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ she said, ‘it was just a word that came into my mind.’

  She stopped, and seemed to be reflecting. From time to time she opened her mouth, and Mathieu thought she was going to speak; but nothing came. Then she said, ‘It’s all the same to me whether people are like that or otherwise.’

  She had rolled a curl round a finger and was tugging it as though she meant to tear it out. Suddenly she added hurriedly, staring at the toes of her shoes: ‘You’re settled, and you won’t change for all the money in the world.’

  ‘Indeed!’ said Mathieu. ‘And how do you know?’

  ‘It’s an impression: and the impression is that your life and your ideas about everything are all set. You reach out to things when you think they’re within your scope, but you don’t trouble to go and get them.’

  ‘And how do you know?’ repeated Mathieu. He could not find anything else to say: he felt she was right.

  ‘I thought,’ said Ivich wearily, ‘I thought that you weren’t prepared to risk anything, that you were too intelligent for that —’ and she added with a sly look: ‘But of course if you tell me you aren’t like that...’

  Mathieu suddenly thought of Marcelle, and was ashamed. ‘No,’ he said in a low tone, ‘I’m like that, just as you thought me.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ivich in a triumphant tone.

  ‘You despise me for it?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Ivich indulgently. ‘I approve. With Gauguin life must have been impossible.’ And she added, without the faintest trace of irony in her voice: ‘With you there’s a sense of security, never any fear of the unexpected.’

  ‘True,’ said Mathieu dryly. ‘If you mean I don’t act on impulse... You know I could, like anybody else, but I think it’s a poor way to behave.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ivich. ‘Everything you do is always so methodical...’

  Mathieu felt himself grow pale. ‘What are you referring to, Ivich?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘But you must have had something definite in mind.’

  ‘Every week,’ she muttered, without looking at him, ‘you used to turn up with the Semaine à Paris, and make out a programme...’

  ‘Ivich!’ said Mathieu impatiently, ‘it was for your benefit!’

  ‘I know,’ said Ivich politely, ‘and I’m very grateful.’

  Mathieu was more surprised than hurt ‘I don’t understand. Didn’t you like going to concerts or looking at pictures?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘You don’t say that with much conviction.’

  ‘I really did like it very much. But —’ she said with sudden violence, ‘I hate being made to feel obligations towards things I like.’

  ‘But you... you didn’t like them,’ repeated Mathieu.

  She had raised her head and flung her hair back, her broad pallid face had shed its mask, and her eyes glittered. Mathieu was dumbfounded; he looked at Ivich’s thin, limp lips, and wondered how he ever could have kissed them.

  ‘You should have told me,’ he continued ruefully, ‘I would never have forced you to come.’

  He had dragged her to concerts, and to exhibitions, he explained the pictures to her, and while he did so she had hated him.

  ‘What sort of use can pictures be to me?’ Ivich went on, not listening to what he said, ‘if I can’t own them? I used to get so furious every time and long to take them away, but one can’t even touch them. And I felt you beside me, so quiet and decorous. You behaved as if you were going to Mass.’

  They fell silent Ivich still wore her hard expression. Mathieu suddenly felt a catch in his throat ‘Ivich, please forgive me for what happened this morning.’

  ‘This morning?’ said Ivich. ‘I had quite forgotten it. I was thinking about Gauguin.’

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ said Mathieu. ‘I still don’t understand how it could have happened at all.’

  He spoke to clear his conscience: he knew his cause was lost. Ivich did not answer, and Mathieu continued with an effort.

  ‘There were the museums and the concerts as well... if you knew how
sorry I am! One thinks one is in sympathy with someone... but you never said anything.’

  At every word he thought he had finished. And then another emerged from the far end of his throat and lifted his tongue. He spoke with disgust and in short spasms. ‘I’ll try to change,’ he continued. ‘I’m contemptible,’ he thought, and a desperate anger flushed his cheeks. Ivich shook her head.

  ‘One can’t change,’ said she. She now spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, and Mathieu frankly detested her. They walked in silence, side by side; immersed in sunlight, and in mutual detestation. But, at the same time, Mathieu saw himself with Ivich’s eyes, and was filled with self-contempt. She raised her hand to her forehead and clasped her temples between her fingers.

  ‘Is it much further?’

  ‘A quarter of an hour. Are you tired?’

  ‘Yes, forgive me, it’s the pictures.’ She tapped her foot on the pavement, and eyed Mathieu with a bewildered air. ‘They’re out of my grasp already, and all getting mixed up in my head. It’s just the same every time.’

  ‘Would you like to go home?’ Mathieu felt almost relieved.

  ‘I think it would be better.’

  Mathieu hailed a taxi. He was now eager to be alone.

  ‘Good-bye,’ said Ivich, without looking at him.

  Mathieu found himself wondering whether he should go to the Sumatra just the same. But he did not even want to see her again.

  ‘Good-bye,’ said she.

  The taxi drove off and for a few moments Mathieu watched it gloomily. Then a door slammed within him, the bolt clicked home, and he fell to thinking of Marcelle.

  CHAPTER 7

  NAKED to the waist, Daniel was shaving in front of his wardrobe mirror. ‘It’s fixed for this morning, by twelve o’clock all will be over.’ It wasn’t a simple scheme: the thing was already there, in the electric light, in the faint rasp of the razor: there was no chance of staving the event off, nor of hastening it, to get it over: it had to be gone through with, and that was all. Ten o’clock had only just struck, but midday was already present in the room, a compact and definite entity, like an eye. Beyond it there was nothing but an afternoon, writhing like a worm into vacancy. The backs of his eyes were smarting from want of sleep, and he had a pimple under his lip, a tiny red spot tipped with white: as always happened now when he had been drinking. Daniel listened: no — nothing but the noises in the street. He looked at the pimple, it was red and inflamed — there were also large bluish circles under his eyes — and he thought: ‘I’m ruining my health.’ He took great care to pass his razor all round the pimple without impinging on it: a little tuft of black hairs would remain, but that couldn’t be helped: Daniel could not bear abrasions. All the while he listened: the door of his room was ajar, so that he could hear better: and he said to himself — ‘I won’t miss her this time.’

  There was a faint almost imperceptible rustle: Daniel had already dashed, razor in hand, to the door, and flung it open. Too late, the child was too quick for him: she had fled, she must have huddled herself into an angle of the landing where she stood with beating heart holding her breath. Daniel noticed a little bunch of carnations on the mat at his feet ‘Nasty little creature,’ he said loudly. It was the concierge’s daughter, he was sure. He had only to look at her fried-fishy eyes when she said good-morning to him. This had been going on for a fortnight: every morning on her return from school she laid flowers outside his door. He kicked the flowers downstairs. He would have to stand and listen for a whole morning in the outer room, that was the only way he would catch her. He would emerge, naked to his belt, and fix her with a glassy eye, ‘It’s my head that attracts her: my head and my shoulders, as she’s a bit of an idealist. She’ll get a shock when she sees the hair on my chest.’ He went back into his room and went on shaving. He observed in the mirror his dark, handsome, blue-jowled visage. ‘That’s what excites them.’ An archangel’s face: Marcelle called him her dear archangel, and now he must submit to the admiring gaze of this deplorable child, who was just at the puffy stage of puberty. ‘Horrid little creatures,’ thought Daniel angrily. He bent forward a little, and with a neat stroke of the razor snipped the tip off his pimple. It wouldn’t be a bad joke to deface the head they all admired — ‘Pah, a scarred face is still a face, it always means something: I should get tired of it all the sooner.’ He walked up close to the mirror and eyed himself distastefully. ‘Besides,’ he said to himself, ‘I like to be good-looking.’ He looked tired. He gripped himself at the level of the hips. He must get his weight down by a couple of pounds. Seven whiskies last evening all by himself at Johnny’s. Until three o’clock he hadn’t been able to make up his mind to go home because it gave him the shivers to put his head on the pillow, and feel himself slide away into the darkness, reflecting that there must be a tomorrow. Daniel thought of the dogs at Constantinople: they had been rounded up in the streets and put into sacks, or even baskets, and then abandoned on a deserted island: there they proceeded to devour each other; and out at sea their howls were sometimes carried on the wind to the ears of passing sailors. ‘It wasn’t dogs that ought to have been put there.’ Daniel didn’t like dogs. He slipped on a cream silk shirt, and a pair of grey flannel trousers: he chose a tie with care: today he would wear the green striped one, as he looked rather washed-out. Then he opened the window, and the morning came into the room, a heavy, stifling morning, burdened with events to come. For one second he stood lapped in the stagnant heat, then he looked about him: he liked his room because it was impersonal and did not give him away, indeed it looked like a room in a hotel. Four bare walls, two easy chairs, one straight chair, a table, a wardrobe, a bed. Daniel possessed no mementoes. He observed the great wicker basket, standing open in the middle of the room, and turned his eyes away: and he thought of what confronted him today.

  By Daniel’s watch the time was twenty-five minutes past ten. He half-opened the door into the kitchen and whistled. Scipio appeared first: white and sandy, with a straggling beard. He eyed Daniel grimly, yawned ferociously and arched his back. Daniel knelt down gently and began to stroke his nose. The cat, with eyes half-closed, patted his sleeve with his paw. After a moment or two, Daniel picked him up by the scruff of his neck and deposited him in the basket: Scipio lay motionless, prostrate, and content. Malvina next; Daniel liked her less than the two others, she was sly and servile. When she was quite sure he had noticed her, she began to purr and attitudinize while still at a distance. She rubbed her head against the edge of the door. Then Daniel caressed her plump neck with one finger, she turned over on her back with stiffened paws, and he tickled the teats beneath the black fur. ‘Ha, ha!’ he said in a sort of rhythmic chant. ‘Ha, ha!’ and she swung from side to side gracefully tilting her head. ‘Wait and see,’ he thought: ‘Just wait till twelve o’clock.’ He picked her up by the paws and put her down beside Scipio. She looked slightly surprised, but curled herself up and, after a moment’s hesitation, again began to purr.

  ‘Poppaea!’ cried Daniel. ‘Poppaea, Poppaea!’ Poppaea hardly ever came when called: Daniel had to go and fetch her from the kitchen. When she saw him, she jumped on to the gas stove with a sharp peevish growl. She was a stray cat, heavily scarred across her right side. Daniel had found her in the Luxemburg one winter evening, just before the garden closed, and had taken her home. She was imperious and bad-tempered, and she often bit Malvina: Daniel was fond of her. He took her in his arms, and she drew her head back, flattening her ears and arching her neck: she looked quite scandalized. He stroked her nose, and she nibbled the tip of one finger with angry playfulness: then he pinched her in the loose flesh of the neck, and she lifted a defiant little head. She did not purr — Poppaea never purred — but she looked at him, straight in the face, and Daniel thought, as indeed he often did: ‘A cat that looks you in the eyes is very rare.’ At the same time, he felt an intolerable anguish take possession of him, and had to turn his eyes away: ‘There, there,’ he said, ‘there, there, my beauty,’ and smiled
at her with eyes averted. The two others had remained side by side; purring idiotically, like a grasshopper chorus. Daniel eyed them with a sort of malignant relief: ‘Rabbit-stew,’ he thought. He remembered Malvina’s pink teats. It was no end of a business to get Poppaea into the basket: he had to push her in headfirst, but she turned and spat and tried to claw him. ‘Oh, would you now?’ said Daniel. He picked her up by the neck and hindquarters, and crammed her forcibly into the basket, which creaked as Poppaea clawed it from within. Daniel took advantage of the cat’s momentary stupor to slam down the lid and snap the two clasps.

  ‘Ouf!’ he ejaculated. His hand smarted slightly — with a dry little pain that was almost a tickle. He got up and eyed the basket with ironical satisfaction: safe and secure. On the back of his hand were two scratches, and in his innermost self an odd tickling sensation that promised to become unpleasant. He picked up the ball of string off the table and put it in his trouser pocket.

  Then he hesitated: ‘It’s a goodish way, I shall get pretty hot.’ He would have liked to wear his flannel jacket, but it was not a habit of his to yield easily to his inclinations, and besides it would be rather comical to march along in the bright sunshine, flushed and perspiring, with that burden in his arms. Comical and a trifle ridiculous: the vision made him smile and he chose his brown tweed jacket, which he had not been able to bear since the end of May. He lifted the basket by the handle, and thought: ‘Curse the little brutes, how heavy they are.’ He pictured their attitudes, humiliated and grotesque, their fury and their terror. ‘And that is what I was so fond of!’ No sooner had he shut the three idols into a wicker basket than they became cats once more, just simply cats, small, vain, stupid mammals, stricken with panic — very far from being sacred. ‘Cats: merely cats.’ He began to laugh; he had the feeling that he was going to play an excellent trick on somebody. As he passed the flat door, his heart turned over, but the sensation soon passed: once on the staircase he felt hard and resolute, with an underside of strange sickliness, reminiscent of raw meat. The concierge was in her doorway, and she smiled at him. She liked Daniel because he was so ceremonious and polite.