The Age of Reason Read online

  Mathieu knocked.

  ‘What is it?’ said a voice.

  ‘I want to speak to you.’

  ‘This isn’t a time to visit people.’

  ‘I have a message from Andrée Besnier.’

  The door opened slightly. Mathieu saw a wisp of yellow hair and a large nose.

  ‘What do you want? Don’t try to pull any police stuff on me, it’s no good, everything’s in order here. I can have the light on all night if I like. If you’re an inspector, show me your card.’

  ‘I’m not from the police,’ said Mathieu. ‘I’m in a fix. And I was given your name.’

  ‘Come in.’

  Mathieu went in. The old woman was wearing trousers, and a blouse with a zip fastener. She was very thin, and her eyes were set and hard.

  ‘You know Andrée Besnier?’

  She eyed him grimly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mathieu. ‘She came to see you last year about Christmas-time because she was in trouble: she was rather ill, and you came four times to give her treatment.’

  ‘Well?’

  Mathieu looked at the old woman’s hands. They were a man’s hands, a strangler’s hands: furrowed, cracked, with broken nails, and black with scars and gashes. On the first joint of the left thumb, there were some purple warts, and a large black scab. Mathieu shuddered as he thought of Marcelle’s soft brown flesh.

  ‘I’ve not come on her account,’ he said. ‘I’ve come for one of her friends.’

  The old woman laughed drily: ‘It’s the first time that a man has had the cheek to turn up on my doorstep. I won’t have any dealings with men, let me tell you that.’

  The room was dirty and in disorder. There were boxes everywhere, and straw on the tiled floor. On a table Mathieu noticed a bottle of rum and a half-filled glass.

  ‘I’ve come because my friend sent me. She can’t come today, and she asked me to fix up a date.’

  At the other end of the room a door stood half open. Mathieu could have sworn there was someone behind that door.

  ‘Poor kids,’ said the old woman. ‘They’re too silly. I’ve only got to look at you to see that you’re born unlucky — you’re the sort that upsets glasses, and smashes mirrors. And women trust you. Well, they get what they deserve.’

  Mathieu remained polite.

  ‘I should have liked to see where you operate.’

  The old woman flung him a baleful and suspicious look.

  ‘Look here! Who told you that I operate? What are you talking about? Mind your own business. If your friend wants to see me, let her come herself. I won’t deal with anyone else. You want to make inquiries, do you? Did she make any inquiries before she got into your grip? You’ve had an accident. All right. Then let us hope I shall be better at my job than you were at yours — and that’s all I have to say. Good night.’

  ‘Good night, Madame,’ said Mathieu.

  He went out with a sense of deliverance. He turned and walked slowly towards the Avenue d’Orléans: for the first time since he had left her, he could think of Marcelle without pain, without horror, and with a sort of tender melancholy: ‘I’ll go and see Sarah tomorrow,’ he said to himself.

  CHAPTER 2

  BORIS eyed the red-checked table-cloth, and thought of Mathieu Delarue. ‘A good chap that.’ The orchestra was silent, the air was blue, and there was a buzz of talk. Boris knew everybody in the narrow little room: they weren’t people who came for a good time: they came along together after their jobs were done, quietly and in need of food. The Negro opposite Lola was the singer from the Paradise: the six fellows at the far end with their girls were the band from the Nénette. Something had certainly happened to them, they had had a bit of unexpected luck, perhaps an engagement for the summer (they had been talking vaguely the evening before last about a cabaret at Constantinople), because they had ordered champagne, and they were usually pretty careful. Boris also noticed the fair-haired girl who danced in sailor’s costume at the Java. The tall emaciated man in spectacles smoking a cigar, was the manager of a cabaret in the Rue Tholozé which had just been shut by the police. He said it would soon be reopened, as he had influence in high places. Boris bitterly regretted never having been there, he would certainly go if it reopened. The man was with a pansy who looked rather attractive from a distance, a fair-haired lad with delicate features, devoid of the usual mincing airs, and not without charm. Boris hadn’t much use for homosexuals because they always were pursuing him, but Ivich rather liked them: she said: ‘Well, at any rate they’ve got the courage not to be like everybody else.’ Boris had great respect for his sister’s opinions, and he made the most conscientious efforts to think well of such people. The Negro was eating a dish of sauerkraut: and Boris reflected that he didn’t like sauerkraut. He wished he knew the name of the dish which had just been brought to the dancer from the Java: a brown mess that looked good. There was a stain of red wine on the table-cloth. An elegant stain, which gave the cloth a satiny sheen in just that place. Lola had spread a little salt on the stain, being a careful woman. The salt was pink. It isn’t true that the salt soaks up stains. He ought to tell Lola that it didn’t. But he would have had to speak: and Boris felt he could not speak. Lola was beside him, soft and very warm, and Boris could not bring himself to utter the slightest word, his voice was dead. ‘Just as though I were dumb.’ It was delicious, his voice was floating at the far end of his throat, soft as cotton, and could not emerge, for it was dead. ‘I like Delarue,’ thought Boris, and felt glad. He would have been even more glad if he had not been conscious, all down his right side, from head to hip, that Lola was looking at him. It would certainly be a passionate look, for Lola could scarcely look at him in any other way. It was rather annoying, for passionate looks demand the acknowledgement of a friendly gesture, or a smile: and Boris couldn’t have made the slightest movement. He was paralysed. But it didn’t really matter: he couldn’t be supposed to have noticed Lola’s look: he guessed it, but that was his affair. Sitting sideways, with his hair in his eyes, he couldn’t see a glimpse of Lola, he could perfectly well suppose that she was looking at the room and the people. Boris didn’t feel sleepy, indeed he was in an excellent humour, as he knew everybody in the room: he noticed the Negro’s pink tongue: Boris had a high opinion of that Negro: on one occasion the Negro had taken his boots off, picked up a box of matches with his toes, opened it, extracted a match, and lit it, all with his toes. ‘He’s a grand chap,’ thought Boris with admiration. ‘Everyone ought to be able to use his feet just like his hands.’ He had a pain in his right side as a consequence of being looked at: he knew that the moment was near when Lola would ask him what he was thinking about. It was absolutely impossible to delay that question, it didn’t depend on him: Lola would ask it in due time, with a kind of fatality. Boris felt as though he had at his disposal a small but infinitely precious fraction of time. As a matter of fact it was rather a pleasant sensation. Boris saw the table-cloth he saw Lola’s glass (Lola had had supper: she never dined before her singing act). She had drunk some Château Gruau, she did herself well, and indulged in a few caprices because she was so terrified of growing old. There was still a little wine in the glass, which looked like dusty blood. The jazz-band began to play: The Moon is Turning Green and Boris found himself wondering if he could sing that song. He fancied himself strolling down the Rue Pigalle in the moonlight, whistling a little tune. Delarue had told him that he whistled like a pig. Boris began to laugh silently, and thought: ‘Blast the fellow!’ He was brimming with affection for Mathieu. He peered out of the corner of his eye, without turning round, and he saw Lola’s heavy eyes beneath a luxurious tress of auburn hair. As a matter of fact it was quite easy to withstand a look. The trouble was to get used to that special sort of ardent emanation that sets your face aflame when someone is watching you with passion in her eyes. Boris submissively yielded to Lola’s observing eyes — his body, his slim neck, and the half-profile that she loved so much: this done, he could take refuge in the
depths of his own self and savour the agreeable little thoughts that came into his mind. ‘What are you thinking about?’ said Lola.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘One is always thinking of something.’

  ‘I was thinking of nothing.’

  ‘Not even that you like the tune they were playing, or that you wished you could play the castanets?’

  ‘Yes — things like that.’

  ‘There you are. Why don’t you tell me? I want to know everything you think.’

  ‘They’re not things one can talk about, they’re too trivial.’

  ‘Trivial! One might suppose that your tongue had been given you simply to talk philosophy with your professor.’

  He looked at her and smiled: ‘I like her because she’s got red hair and looks rather old.’

  ‘You’re a strange boy,’ said Lola.

  Boris blinked and assumed a pleading air. He didn’t like people talking about himself: it was always so complicated, and he became bewildered. Lola looked as if she was angry, but it was simply because she loved him passionately and tormented herself about him. There were moments when it was more than she could bear, she would lose her temper for no reason, and glare at Boris, not knowing how to take him, and her hands began to quiver. All this used to surprise Boris, but he was quite accustomed to it by this time. Lola laid her hand on Boris’s head: ‘I wonder what’s inside it,’ she said. ‘I feel quite frightened sometimes.’

  ‘You needn’t: all quite harmless, I assure you,’ said Boris, laughing.

  ‘Yes, those thoughts of yours are just so many ways of getting away from me.’ And she ruffled his hair.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Boris. ‘Please don’t uncover my forehead.’

  He took her hand, stroked it for a minute or two, and laid it back on the table.

  ‘You are there, and quite affectionate,’ said Lola. ‘I begin to think you’re really fond of me, and then — suddenly — no one’s there at all, and I wonder where you’ve gone.’

  ‘I’m here.’

  Lola eyed him narrowly. Her pallid face was marred by the sort of dewy, sentimental expression she assumed when singing Les Écorchés. She thrust out her lips, those large drooping lips that he had at first loved so much. Since he had felt them on his month, they gave him the sense of a clammy, feverish nakedness set in the centre of a plaster mask. At present he preferred Lola’s skin, so white that it did not look real.

  ‘You — you aren’t fed up with me?’

  ‘I’m never fed up.’

  Lola sighed, and Boris thought with satisfaction: ‘It’s fantastic how old she looks, she doesn’t tell her age, but she must be well over forty.’ He preferred that people who liked him should look old, he found it reassuring. Added to which it gave them a sort of awesomely fragile air, not apparent at the first encounter, because they all had leathery skins. He felt an impulse to kiss Lola’s puzzled face, he said to himself that her day was done, that she had thrown away her life, and was now alone, even more so perhaps since she had fallen in love with him. ‘I can’t do anything for her,’ he thought with resignation. And he found her, in that thought, irresistibly attractive.

  ‘I’m ashamed,’ said Lola.

  Her voice was heavy and sombre, like a red velvet curtain.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re such a kid.’

  ‘I like to hear you say the word — kid,’ said he. ‘It suits your voice. You say it twice in the Écorchés song, and I’d go and hear you just for that. Were there a lot of people tonight?’

  ‘A mouldy crowd. I don’t know where they came from — they just sat and chattered. And they hadn’t got any use for me at all. Sarrunyan had to ask them to keep quiet: it got on my nerves, I felt I was getting in wrong. They cheered when I came in, though.’

  ‘They’d always do that’

  ‘Well, I’m fed up,’ said Lola. ‘I loathe singing for ticks of that kind. They were the sort who came there because they’ve got to return a family invitation. I wish you could see them come in together, all over smiles. They bow, and they hold the good lady’s chair while she sits down. So really you’re interrupting them, and they just glare at you when you come in. Boris —’ said Lola abruptly: ‘I sing for my living.’

  ‘That’s so.’

  ‘If I’d thought I should finish like that, I would never have started.’

  ‘Well, but however you look at it, when you sang at music halls, you earned your living by singing.’

  ‘That wasn’t the same.’

  After a short silence, Lola added hurriedly: ‘By the way, this evening I talked to the new little chap who sings next after me. He’s a very decent fellow, but he’s no more Russian than I am.’

  ‘She thinks she’s annoying me,’ thought Boris. And he resolved to tell her once and for all that she never could annoy him. Not today — but later on.

  ‘Perhaps he has learnt Russian.’

  ‘But you ought to be able to tell me if he has a good accent.’

  ‘My parents left Russia in ’17 when I was three months old.’

  ‘It’s funny that you shouldn’t know Russian,’ observed Lola with a pensive air.

  ‘She’s fantastic,’ thought Boris. ‘She’s ashamed of being in love with me because she’s older than I am. It seems perfectly natural to me — after all one party must be older than the other.’ Above all, it was more moral: Boris wouldn’t have known how to treat a girl of his own age. If both parties are young, they don’t know how to behave, they get across each other, and the whole thing feels like a doll’s dinner-party. With older people, it’s quite different. They’re reliable, they show you what to do, and there’s solidity in their affection. When Boris was with Lola, he had the approval of his conscience, he felt himself justified. Of course he preferred Mathieu’s company because Mathieu wasn’t a girl: a man was more intriguing all the time. Besides Mathieu taught him all sorts of dodges. But Boris often found himself wondering whether Mathieu had any real regard for him. Mathieu was casual and brusque, and of course it was right that people of their sort shouldn’t be sentimental when they were together, but there were all sorts of ways in which a fellow could show he liked someone, and Boris felt that Mathieu might well have shown his affection by a word or a gesture now and again. With Ivich, Mathieu was quite different. Boris suddenly recalled Mathieu’s face one day when he was helping Ivich put on her overcoat; and he felt an unpleasant shrinking at the heart. Mathieu’s smile: on those sardonic lips that Boris loved so much, that strange, appealing, and affectionate smile. But Boris’s head soon filled with smoke, and he thought of nothing at all.

  ‘He’s off again,’ said Lola.

  She eyed him anxiously. ‘What were you thinking about?’

  ‘I was thinking of Delarue,’ said Boris regretfully.

  Lola smiled sadly.

  ‘Couldn’t you think of me too sometimes?’

  ‘I don’t need to think of you, since you are there.’

  ‘Why are you always thinking of Delarue? Do you wish you were with him?’

  ‘I’m quite glad to be here.’

  ‘Do you mean that you’re glad to be here, or glad to be with me?’

  ‘It’s the same thing.’

  ‘It’s the same thing for you. Not for me. When I’m with you, I don’t care where I am. Besides. I’m never glad to be with you.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ asked Boris with some surprise.

  ‘No, not glad. Don’t pretend to be stupid, you know just what I mean: I’ve seen you with Delarue, you’re all of a twitter when he’s there.’

  ‘That’s quite different’

  Lola set her lovely, ravaged face quite close to his: there was an imploring expression in her eyes.

  ‘Look at me, you little stiff, and tell me why you like him so much.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t like him as much as all that. He’s a good chap. Lola, I hate talking to you about him, because you told me you couldn’t stand him.’
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br />   Lola smiled with a rather embarrassed air.

  ‘Now you’re twisting. Bless the little creature, I didn’t tell you I couldn’t stand him. It was simply that I couldn’t understand what you found in him. I wish you would explain. I want to understand.’

  And Boris thought: ‘It isn’t true — she’d start yawning before I’d said three words.’

  ‘I find him sympathetic,’ said he sedately.

  ‘That’s what you always say. It isn’t precisely the word that I should choose. Tell me he’s intelligent, well-read, and I’ll agree: but not sympathetic. Look here, I’ll tell you what I think of him: sympathetic is a word I should use about somebody like Maurice, a straight sort of fellow — but Mathieu makes everyone uncomfortable because he isn’t fish nor flesh, you don’t know how to take him. Look at his hands, for instance.’

  ‘What’s the matter with his hands? I like them.’

  ‘They’re workmen’s hands. They’re always quivering a little, as though he’d just finished some heavy job of work.’

  ‘Well, why not?’

  ‘Yes, but the point is he’s not a workman. When I see his great paw gripping a glass of whisky, he looks like a man who means to enjoy life, and I don’t think the worse of him for that: but take care not to watch him drinking, with that odd mouth of his — why, it’s a parson’s mouth. I can’t explain it, I get the feeling he’s austere, and then if you look at his eyes, you can see he knows too much, he’s the sort of fellow who can’t enjoy anything in a simple way, neither eating, nor drinking, nor sleeping with women: he has to think about everything, it’s like that voice of his, the cutting voice of a gentleman who is never wrong — I know it goes with the job of having to explain things to small boys. I had a teacher who talked like him, but I’m not at school any more, and I find it tiresome: I can understand a man being completely one thing or the other, a genial brute, or the intellectual type, a schoolmaster or a parson, but not both at the same time. I don’t know if there are women who like that sort of thing — I suppose there are, but I tell you frankly, I couldn’t bear a fellow like that to touch me, I shouldn’t like to feel those ruffianly hands on me while he soused me with his icy look.’