The Age of Reason Page 13

  A silence fell. Mathieu could think of nothing else to say. And yet he had no desire to go, he enjoyed a sort of complacence in her company.

  ‘But I mustn’t keep you,’ said Odette kindly. ‘Run along to Jacques, you look as if you had something on your mind.’

  Mathieu got up. He remembered that he was going to ask Jacques for money, and felt the tips of his fingers tingle.

  ‘Good-bye, Odette,’ he said affectionately. ‘No, no, don’t get up. I’ll look in again on my way out.’

  Up to what point was she a victim? — he wondered, knocking at Jacques’ door. With that type of woman one never knew.

  ‘Come in,’ said Jacques.

  He rose, alert and erect, and approached Mathieu.

  ‘Good morning, old boy,’ he said cordially. ‘How are things?’

  He looked much younger than Mathieu, although he was the elder of the two: Mathieu thought he was thickening round the hips; though he no doubt wore a body-belt.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Mathieu, with a friendly smile.

  He felt himself at fault: for twenty years he had felt himself at fault each time he recalled or met his brother.

  ‘Well,’ said Jacques, ‘and what brings you here?’

  Mathieu made a gesture of disgust.

  ‘Something wrong?’ asked Jacques. ‘Look here, take a chair. Would you care for a whisky?’

  ‘A whisky would go down well,’ said Mathieu. He sat down, his throat felt dry. How about drinking his whisky and clearing out without uttering a word? No, it was too late. Jacques knew perfectly well what was up. He would simply think that his brother hadn’t had the courage to ask him for a loan. Jacques remained standing, he produced a bottle of whisky and filled two glasses.

  ‘It’s my last bottle,’ he said, ‘but I shan’t get in any more before the autumn. After all, a good gin-fizz is a better drink for the hot weather, don’t you think?’

  Mathieu did not reply. There was no affection in his eyes as he looked at that fresh and ruddy face, a young man’s face, and that cropped fair hair. Jacques smiled guilelessly, indeed there was a guileless air about the man that morning. ‘That,’ thought Mathieu savagely, ‘is all put on: he knows why I have come, he is just choosing his attitude.’

  ‘You know quite well,’ said Mathieu harshly, ‘that I’ve come to touch you for money.’

  There, the die was cast. He couldn’t draw back now: his brother had already raised his eyebrows in an expression of profound surprise. ‘He won’t spare me anything,’ thought Mathieu with dismay.

  ‘Certainly I didn’t know,’ said Jacques, ‘how should I? Do you mean to insinuate that that’s the sole object of your visits?’

  He sat down, still very erect, and indeed a trifle stiff, and crossed his legs with an easy swing, as though to make up for the rigidity of his torso. He was wearing a smart sports suit of English tweed.

  ‘I don’t mean to insinuate anything at all,’ said Mathieu; he blinked and added, as he gripped his glass: ‘But I need four thousand francs by tomorrow.’ (‘He’s going to say no. I hope to goodness he refuses quickly so that I can clear out.’) But Jacques was never in a hurry: he was a lawyer, and he had plenty of time.

  ‘Four thousand,’ said he, wagging his head with a knowing air. ‘Well, well, well!’

  He extended his legs, and eyed his shoes with satisfaction.

  ‘I find you amusing, Thieu,’ said he. ‘Amusing, and also instructive. Now don’t take offence at what I say to you,’ he said briskly, at a gesture from Mathieu: ‘I have no notion of criticizing your conduct, I’m just turning the thing over in my own mind, viewing it from above — indeed, I would say “from a philosophic standpoint”, if I wasn’t talking to a philosopher. You see, when I think about you, I am the more convinced that one oughtn’t to be a man of principles. You are stiff with them, you even invent them, but you don’t stick to them. In theory, there’s no one more independent, it’s all quite admirable, you live above all class distinctions. Only, I wonder what would become of you if I wasn’t there. Please realize that I am only too happy, being a man without principles, to be able to help you from time to time. But I can’t help feeling that with your ideas I should be rather chary of asking favours from a damned bourgeois. For I am a damned bourgeois,’ he added, laughing heartily. He went on, still laughing: ‘And what is worse, you who despise the family exploit our family ties to touch me for money. For, after all, you wouldn’t apply to me if I wasn’t your brother.’

  He assumed a cordial expression and added: ‘All this doesn’t bore you, I hope.’

  ‘I can’t very well avoid it,’ said Mathieu, laughing too.

  He wasn’t going to engage in an abstract discussion. Such discussions, with Jacques, always led to trouble. Mathieu soon lost his self-control.

  ‘Yes, obviously,’ said Jacques coldly. ‘Don’t you think that with a little organization...? But that’s no doubt opposed to your ideas. I don’t say it’s your fault, mark you: in my view it’s your principles that are to blame.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mathieu, by way of saying something, ‘the rejection of principles is in itself a principle.’

  ‘Not much of a one,’ said Jacques.

  ‘At this moment,’ thought Mathieu to himself, ‘he’s in the mind to part.’ But he looked at his brother’s plump cheeks, florid complexion, his open but rather set expression, and thought with a catch at the heart: ‘He looks hard on the trigger.’ Fortunately, Jacques was again speaking.

  ‘Four thousand,’ he repeated. ‘It must be a sudden call, for, after all, last week when you... when you came to ask me a small service, there was no question of such a sum.’

  ‘That is so,’ said Mathieu. ‘I... it dates from yesterday.’

  He suddenly thought of Marcelle, he saw her in his mind’s eye, a sinister, naked figure in the pink room, and he added in a pleading tone that took him by surprise: ‘Jacques, I need this money.’

  Jacques eyed him with curiosity, and Mathieu bit his lips; when they were together the two brothers were not in the habit of displaying their feelings with such emphasis.

  ‘As bad as all that? I’m surprised. You are certainly not the man... You... in the ordinary way you borrow a little money from me because you either can’t or won’t manage your affairs properly, but I would never have believed... I’m not, of course, asking you any questions,’ he added in a faintly interrogative tone.

  Mathieu hesitated: should he tell him it was income-tax? No. Jacques knew he had paid it in May.

  ‘Marcelle is pregnant,’ he said curtly.

  He felt himself blush and shook his shoulders: why not, after all? Why this sudden and consuming shame? He looked straight at his brother with aggressive eyes. Jacques assumed an air of interest.

  ‘Did you want a child?’ He deliberately pretended not to understand.

  ‘No,’ said Mathieu, curtly. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘It would certainly have surprised me,’ said Jacques, ‘but, after all, you might have wanted to carry your experiences as far as possible outside the established order.’

  ‘Yes, but it isn’t that at all.’

  A silence followed, and then Jacques continued blandly: ‘Then when is the wedding to be?’

  Mathieu flushed with wrath: as always, Jacques refused to face the situation candidly, he obstinately revolved around it, and in so doing his mind was searching eagerly for an eyrie from which he could take a vertical view of other people’s conduct. Whatever might be said or done to him, his first reaction was to get above the conflict, he could see nothing except from above, and he had a predilection for eyries.

  ‘We have decided on an operation for abortion,’ said Mathieu brutally.

  Jacques did not lift an eyebrow. ‘Have you found a doctor?’ he asked with a non-committal air.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A reliable man? From what you have told me, the young lady’s health is delicate.’

  ‘I have friends who assure me
he’s all right.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jacques. ‘Yes; obviously.’

  He closed his eyes for an instant, reopened them, and laid the tips of his fingers together.

  ‘In short,’ said he, ‘if I have properly understood you, what has happened is this: you have just heard that your girl is pregnant; you don’t want to marry, that being against your principles, but you consider yourself as pledged to her by ties as strict as those of marriage. Not wanting to marry her, nor to damage her reputation, you have decided on an operation for abortion under the best possible conditions. Friends have recommended you a trustworthy doctor who charges a fee of four thousand francs, and there is nothing left for you to do but to get the money. Is that it?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Mathieu.

  ‘And why do you want the money by tomorrow?’

  ‘The fellow I have in view is leaving for America in a week.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jacques. ‘I understand.’

  He lifted his joined hands to the level of his eyes and contemplated them with the precise expression of one now in a position to draw conclusions from his words. But Mathieu had made no mistake: a lawyer doesn’t conclude an affair so quickly. Jacques had dropped his hands, and laid them one on each knee, he was sitting well back in his chair, and the light had gone out of his eyes. ‘The authorities are inclined to drop on abortions at the moment.’

  ‘I know,’ said Mathieu, ‘they get a fit of doing so from time to time. They catch a few poor devils who can’t protect themselves, but the great specialists don’t have to worry.’

  ‘You mean that that’s unjust,’ said Jacques. ‘I’m entirely of your opinion. But I don’t wholly disapprove of the results. By force of circumstances, your poor devils are herbalists or clumsy old women who use dirty instruments: the attentions of the police do weed them out, and that’s something.’

  ‘Well, there it is,’ said Mathieu wearily. ‘I have come to ask you for four thousand francs.’

  ‘And —’ said Jacques, ‘are you quite sure that abortion is in accordance with your principles?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know, it’s for you to say. You are a pacifist because you respect human life, and you intend to destroy a life.’

  ‘I have quite made up my mind,’ said Mathieu. ‘Moreover, though I may be a pacifist, I don’t respect human life, there’s no such implication.’

  ‘Indeed!’ said Jacques. ‘I thought...’ And he eyed Mathieu with amused complacency. ‘So here you are in the guise of an infanticide! It doesn’t suit you at all, my poor Thieu.’

  ‘He’s afraid I shall get caught,’ thought Mathieu. ‘He won’t give me a penny.’ It ought to have been possible to say to him: ‘If you let me have the money you run no risk, I shall get into touch with a clever man who is not on the police records. If you refuse, I shall be obliged to send Marcelle to a low-down abortionist, and in that case I could guarantee nothing, because the police know them all and may pull them in any day.’ But these arguments were too direct to influence Jacques. Mathieu merely said: ‘Abortion is not infanticide.’

  Jacques picked up a cigarette and lit it. ‘True,’ he observed, with detachment. ‘I agree, abortion is not infanticide, it is “metaphysical” murder.’ And he added gravely: ‘My dear Mathieu, I have no objections to metaphysical murder, any more than to any perfect crime. But that you should commit a metaphysical murder — you, being what you are...’ He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. ‘No, that would be quite out of the picture.’

  It was all up, Jacques would refuse, and Mathieu might as well go away. However, he cleared his throat, and, to salve his conscience, said; ‘Then you can’t help me?’

  ‘Please understand me,’ said Jacques. ‘I don’t refuse to do you a service, but would this be really doing you a service? Added to which I’m quite sure you’ll easily get the money you need...’ He rose abruptly, as though he had taken a decision, went up to his brother, and put a friendly hand on his shoulder. ‘Listen, Thieu,’ he said cordially. ‘Assume I have refused. I don’t want to help you to tell yourself a lie. But I have another suggestion to make...’

  Mathieu, who was about to get up, subsided into his chair, and the old fraternal resentment took possession of him once more. That firm, but gentle pressure on his shoulder was more than he could stand: he threw his head back, and saw Jacques’ face foreshortened.

  ‘Tell myself a lie! Look here, Jacques, say you don’t want to be mixed up in a case of abortion, that you disapprove of it, or that you haven’t the ready money, and you’re perfectly within your rights, nor shall I resent it. But this talk of lying is nonsense, there’s no lying in it at all. I don’t want a child: a child is coming, and I propose to suppress it; that’s all.’

  Jacques withdrew his hand, and took a few steps with a meditative air. ‘He’s going to make me a speech,’ thought Mathieu. ‘I ought not to have let myself in for an argument.’

  ‘Mathieu,’ said Jacques in a calm tone, ‘I know you better than you think, and you distress me. I’ve long been afraid that something like this would happen: this coming child is the logical result of a situation into which you entered of your own free will, and you want to suppress it because you won’t accept all the consequences of your acts. Come, shall I tell you the truth? I daresay you aren’t lying to yourself at this precise moment: the trouble is that your whole life is built upon a lie.’

  ‘Carry on,’ said Mathieu. ‘I don’t mind. Tell me what it is I’m trying to evade.’

  ‘You are trying,’ said Jacques, ‘to evade the fact that you’re a bourgeois and ashamed of it. I myself reverted to the bourgeoisie after many aberrations, and contracted a marriage of convenience with the party, but you are a bourgeois by taste and temperament, and it’s your temperament that’s pushing you into marriage. For you are married, Mathieu,’ said he forcibly.

  ‘First I heard of it,’ said Mathieu.

  ‘Oh yes, you are, only you pretend you aren’t because you are possessed by theories. You have fallen into a habit of life with this young woman: you go to see her quietly four days a week and you spend the night with her. That has been going on for seven years, and there’s no adventure left in it: you respect her, you feel obligations towards her, you don’t want to leave her. And I’m quite sure that your sole object isn’t pleasure. I even imagine that, broadly speaking, however vivid the pleasure may have been, it has by now begun to fade. In fact I expect you sit beside her in the evening and tell her long stories about the events of the day and ask her advice in difficulties.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mathieu, shrugging his shoulders. He was furious with himself.

  ‘Very well,’ said Jacques, ‘will you tell me how that differs from marriage... except for cohabitation.’

  ‘Except for cohabitation?’ said Mathieu ironically. ‘Excuse me, but that’s a quibble.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jacques, ‘being what you are, it probably doesn’t cost you much to do without that.’

  ‘He has never said so much about my affairs,’ thought Mathieu, ‘he is taking his revenge.’ The thing to do was to go out and slam the door. But Mathieu was well aware that he would stay until the end: he was seized by an aggressive and malicious impulse to discover his brother’s true opinion.

  ‘But why do you say it probably doesn’t cost me much, being what I am?’

  ‘Because you get a comfortable life out of the situation, and an appearance of liberty: you have all the advantages of marriage and you exploit your principles to avoid its inconveniences. You refuse to regularize the position, which you find quite easy. If anyone suffers from all this, it isn’t you.’

  ‘Marcelle shares my ideas on marriage,’ said Mathieu acidly: he heard himself pronounce each word, and felt extremely ill at ease.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jacques, ‘if she didn’t share them she would no doubt be too proud to admit it to you. The fact is, you’re beyond my comprehension: you, so prompt with your indignation when you hear of
an injustice, you keep this woman for years in a humiliating position, for the sole pleasure of telling yourself that you’re respecting your principles. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were true, if you really did adapt your life to your ideas. But, I must tell you once more, you are as good as married, you have a delightful flat, you get a competent salary at fixed intervals, you have no anxiety for the future because the State guarantees you a pension... and you like that sort of life — placid, orderly, the typical life of an official.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Mathieu, ‘there’s a misunderstanding here: I care little whether I’m a bourgeois or whether I’m not. All I want is’ — and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame — ‘to retain my freedom.’

  ‘I should myself have thought,’ said Jacques, ‘that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one’s responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your, view: you condemn capitalist society, and yet you are an official in that society; you display an abstract sympathy with Communists, but you take care not to commit yourself, you have never voted. You despise the bourgeois class, and yet you are a bourgeois, son and brother of a bourgeois, and you live like a bourgeois.’

  Mathieu waved a hand, but Jacques refused to be interrupted.

  ‘You have, however, reached the age of reason, my poor Mathieu,’ said he, in a tone of pity and of warning. ‘But you try to dodge that fact too, you try to pretend you’re younger than you are. Well... perhaps I’m doing you an injustice. Perhaps you haven’t in fact reached the age of reason, it’s really a moral age... perhaps I’ve got there sooner than you have.’

  ‘Now he’s off,’ thought Mathieu, ‘he’s going to tell me about his youth.’ Jacques was very proud of his youth; it was his moral guarantee, it permitted him to defend the cause of order with a good conscience; for five years he had assiduously aped all the fashionable dissipations, he had dallied with surrealism, conducted a few agreeable love affairs, and occasionally, before making love, he had inhaled chloride of ethyl from a handkerchief. One fine day, he had reformed: Odette brought him a dowry of six hundred thousand francs. He had written to Mathieu: ‘A man must have the courage to act like everybody else, in order not to be like anybody.’ And he had bought a lawyer’s practice.