The Counterfeiters: A Novel Page 6

  VI : Bernard Awakens

  We are all bastards;

  And that most venerable man which I

  Did call my father, was I know not where

  When I was stamped.

  SHAKESPEARE: Cymbeline.

  Bernard has had an absurd dream. He doesn’t remember his dream. He doesn’t try to remember his dream, but to get out of it. He returns to the world of reality to feel Olivier’s body pressing heavily against him. Whilst they were asleep (or at any rate while Bernard was asleep) his friend had come close up to him—and, for that matter, the bed was too narrow to allow of much distance; he had turned over; he is sleeping on his side now and Bernard feels Olivier’s warm breath tickling his neck. Bernard has nothing on but his short day-shirt; one of Olivier’s arms is flung across him, weighing oppressively and indiscreetly on his flesh. For a moment Bernard is not sure that Olivier is really asleep. He frees himself gently. He gets up without waking Olivier, dresses and then lies down again on the bed. It is still too early to be going. Four o’clock. The night is only just beginning to dwindle. One more hour of rest, one more hour for gathering strength to start the coming day valiantly. But there is no more sleep for him. Bernard stares at the glimmering window pane, at the grey walls of the little room, at the iron bedstead where George is tossing in his dreams.

  “In a moment,” he says to himself, “I shall be setting out to meet my fate. Adventure! What a splendid word! The advent of destiny! All the surprising unknown that awaits me! I don’t know if everyone is like me, but as soon as I am awake, I like despising the people who are asleep. Olivier, my friend, I shall go off without waiting for your good-bye. Up! valorous Bernard! The time has come!”

  He rubs his face with the corner of a towel dipped in water, brushes his hair, puts on his shoes and leaves the room noiselessly. Out at last!

  Ah! the morning air that has not yet been breathed, how life-giving it seems to body and soul! Bernard follows the railings of the Luxembourg Gardens, goes down the Rue Bonaparte, reaches the quays, crosses the Seine. He thinks of the new rule of life which he has only lately formulated: “If I don’t do it, who will? If I don’t do it at once, when shall I?” He thinks: “Great things to do!” He feels that he is going towards them. “Great things!” he repeats to himself, as he walks along. If only he knew what they were!… In the meantime he knows that he is hungry; here he is at the Halles. He has eight sous in his pocket—not a sou more! He goes into a public house and takes a roll and coffee, standing at the bar. Price, six sous. He has two sous left; he gallantly leaves one on the counter and holds out the other to a ragamuffin who is grubbing in a dustbin. Charity? Swagger? What does it matter? He feels as happy as a king. He has nothing left—and the whole world is his!

  “I expect anything and everything from Providence,” thinks he. “If only it sets a handsome helping of roast beef before me at lunch time, I shall be willing to strike a bargain”—for last night he had gone without his dinner. The sun has risen long ago. Bernard is back again on the quays now. He feels all lightness. When he runs he feels as though he were flying. His thoughts leap through his brain with delicious ease. He thinks:

  “The difficulty in life is to take the same thing seriously for long at a time. For instance, my mother’s love for the person I used to call my father—I believed in it for fifteen years. I still believed in it yesterday. She wasn’t able to take her love seriously, either. I wonder whether I despise her or esteem her the more for having made her son a bastard.… But in reality, I don’t wonder as much as all that. The feelings one has for one’s progenitors are among the things that it’s better not to go into too deeply. As for Mr. Cuckold, it’s perfectly simple—for as far back as I can remember, I’ve always hated him; I must admit now that I didn’t deserve much credit for it—and that’s the only thing I regret. To think that if I hadn’t broken open that drawer I might have gone on all my life believing that I harboured unnatural feelings in my breast towards a father! What a relief to know!… All the same I didn’t exactly break open the drawer; I never even thought of opening it.… And there were extenuating circumstances: first of all I was horribly bored that day. And that curiosity of mine—that: ‘fatal curiosity’ as Fénelon calls it, it’s certainly the surest thing I’ve inherited from my real father, for the Profitendieus haven’t an ounce of it in their composition. I have never met anyone less curious than the gentleman who is my mother’s husband—unless perhaps it’s the children he has produced. I must think about them later on—after I have dined.… To lift up a marble slab off the top of a table and to see a drawer underneath is really not the same thing as picking a lock. I’m not a burglar. It might happen to anyone to lift the marble slab off a table. Theseus must have been about my age when he lifted the stone. The difficulty in the case of a table is the clock as a rule.… I shouldn’t have dreamt of lifting the marble slab off the table if I hadn’t wanted to mend the clock.… What doesn’t happen to everyone is to find arms underneath—or guilty love-letters. Pooh! The important thing was that I should learn the facts. It isn’t everyone who can indulge in the luxury of a ghost to reveal them, like Hamlet. Hamlet! It’s curious how one’s point of view changes according as one is the off-spring of crime or legitimacy. I’ll think about that later on—after I have dined.… Was it wrong of me to read those letters!… No, I should be feeling remorseful! And if I hadn’t read the letters, I should have had to go on living in ignorance and falsehood and submission. Oh, for a draught of air! Oh, for the open sea! ‘Bernard! Bernard, that green youth of yours …’ as Bossuet says. Seat your youth on that bench, Bernard. What a beautiful morning! There really are days when the sun seems to be kissing the earth. If I could get rid of myself for a little, there’s not a doubt but I should write poetry.”

  And as he lay stretched on the bench, he got rid of himself so effectually that he fell asleep.

  VII : Lilian and Vincent

  The sun, already high in the heavens, caresses Vincent’s bare foot on the wide bed, where he is lying beside Lilian. She sits up and looks at him, not knowing that he is awake, and is astonished to see a look of anxiety on his face.

  It is possible that Lady Griffith loved Vincent; but what she loved in him was success. Vincent was tall, handsome, slim, but he did not know how to hold himself, how to sit down or get up. He had an expressive face, but he did his hair badly. Above all she admired the boldness and robustness of his intellect; he was certainly highly educated, but she thought him uncultivated. With the instinct of a mistress and a mother, she hung over this big boy of hers and made it her task to form him. He was her creation—her statue. She taught him to polish his nails, to part his hair on one side instead of brushing it back, so that his brow, when it was half hidden by a stray lock, looked all the whiter and loftier. And then instead of the modest little ready-made bows he used to wear, she gave him really becoming neck-ties. Decidedly Lady Griffith loved Vincent; but she could not put up with him when he was silent or “moody,” as she called it.

  She gently passes a finger over Vincent’s forehead, as though to efface a wrinkle—those two deep vertical furrows which start from his eyebrows, and give his face a look almost of suffering.

  “If you are going to bring me regrets, anxieties, remorse,” she murmurs, as she leans over him, “it would be better never to come back.”

  Vincent shuts his eyes as though to shut out too bright a light. The jubilation in Lilian’s face dazzles him.

  “You must treat this as if it were a mosque—take your shoes off before you come in, so as not to bring in any mud from the outside. Do you suppose I don’t know what you are thinking of?” Then, as Vincent tries to put his hand on her mouth, she defends herself with the grace of a naughty child.

  “No! Let me speak to you seriously. I have reflected a great deal about what you said the other day. People always think that women aren’t capable of reflection, but you know, it depends upon the woman.… That thing you said the other day about the
products of crossbreeding … and that it isn’t by crossing that one gets satisfactory results so much as by selection.… Have I remembered your lesson, eh? Well, this morning I think you have bred a monster—a perfectly ridiculous creature—you’ll never rear it! A cross between a bacchante and the Holy Ghost! Haven’t you now?… You’re disgusted with yourself for having chucked Laura. I can tell it from the lines on your forehead. If you want to go back to her, say so at once and leave me; I shall have been mistaken in you and I shan’t mind in the least. But if you mean to stay with me, then get rid of that funereal countenance. You remind me of certain English people—the more emancipated their opinions, the more they cling to their morality; so that there are no severer Puritans than their free-thinkers.… You think I’m heartless? You’re wrong. I understand perfectly that you are sorry for Laura. But then, what are you doing here?”

  Then, as Vincent turned his head away:

  “Look here! You must go to the bath-room now and try and wash your regrets off in the shower-bath. I shall ring for breakfast, eh? And when you come back, I’ll explain something that you don’t seem to understand.”

  He had got up. She sprang after him.

  “Don’t dress just yet. In the cupboard on the right hand side of the bath, you’ll find a collection of burnouses and haiks and pyjamas. Take anything you like.”

  Vincent appeared twenty minutes later dressed in a pistachio-coloured silk jellabah.

  “Oh, wait a minute—wait! Let me arrange you!” cried Lilian in delight. She pulled out of an oriental chest two wide purple scarves; wound the darker of the two as a sash round Vincent’s waist, and the other as a turban round his head.

  “My thoughts are always the same colour as my clothes,” she said. (She had put on crimson and silver lamé pyjamas.) “I remember once, when I was quite a little girl at San Francisco, I was put into black because a sister of my mother’s had died—an old aunt whom I had never seen. I cried the whole day long. I was terribly, terribly sad; I thought that I was very unhappy and that I was grieving deeply for my aunt’s death—all because I was in black. Nowadays, if men are more serious than women, it’s because their clothes are darker. I’ll wager that your thoughts are quite different from what they were a little while ago. Sit down there on the bed; and when you’ve drunk a glass of vodka and a cup of tea and eaten two or three sandwiches, I’ll tell you a story. Say when I’m to begin.… ”

  She settled down on the rug beside the bed, crouching between Vincent’s legs like an Egyptian statue, with her chin resting on her knees. When she had eaten and drunk, she began:

  “I was on the Bourgogne, you know, on the day of the wreck. I was seventeen, so now you know how old I am. I was a very good swimmer, and to show you that I’m not hard-hearted, I’ll tell you that if my first thought was to save myself, my second was to save someone else. I’m not quite sure even whether it wasn’t my first. Or rather, I don’t think I thought of anything; but nothing disgusts me so much in such moments as the people who only think of themselves—oh, yes—the women who scream. There was a first boatload, chiefly of women and children, and some of them yelled to such an extent that it was enough to make anyone lose his head. The boat was so badly handled that instead of dropping down onto the sea straight, it dived nose foremost and everyone in it was flung out before it even had time to fill with water. The whole scene took place by the light of torches and lanterns and searchlights. You can’t imagine how ghastly it was. The waves were very big and everything that was not in the light was lost in darkness on the other side of the hill of water.

  “I have never lived more intensely; but I was as incapable of reflection as a Newfoundland dog, I suppose, when he jumps into the water. I can’t even understand now what happened; I only know that I had noticed a little girl in the boat—a darling thing of about five or six; and when I saw the boat overturn, I immediately made up my mind that it was her I would save. She was with her mother, but the poor woman was a bad swimmer; and as usual in such cases, her skirts hampered her. As for me, I expect I undressed mechanically; I was called to take my place in the second boatload. I must have got in; and then I no doubt jumped straight into the sea out of the boat; all I can remember is swimming about for a long time with the child clinging to my neck. It was terrified and clutched me so tight that I couldn’t breathe. Luckily the people in the boat saw us and either waited for us or rowed towards us. But that’s not why I’m telling you this story. The recollection which remains most vividly with me and which nothing will ever efface from my mind and my heart is this— There were about forty or so of us in the boat, all crowded together, for a number of swimmers had been picked up at the last gasp like me. The water was almost on a level with the edge of the boat. I was in the stern and I was holding the little girl I had just saved tightly pressed against me to warm her—and to prevent her from seeing what I couldn’t help seeing myself—two sailors, one armed with a hatchet and the other with a kitchen chopper. And what do you think they were doing?… They were hacking off the fingers and hands of the swimmers who were trying to get into our boat. One of these two sailors (the other was a Negro) turned to me, as I sat there, my teeth chattering with cold and fright and horror, and said, ‘If another single one gets in we shall be bloody well done for. The boat’s full.’ And he added that it was a thing that had to be done in all shipwrecks, but that naturally one didn’t mention it.

  “I think I fainted then; at any rate, I can’t remember anything more, just as one remains deaf for a long time after a noise that has been too tremendous.

  “And when I came to myself on board the X., which picked us up, I realized that I was no longer the same, that I never could again be the same sentimental young girl I had been before; I realized that a part of myself had gone down with the Bourgogne; that henceforth there would be a whole heap of delicate feelings whose fingers and hands I should hack away to prevent them from climbing into my heart and wrecking it.”

  She looked at Vincent out of the corner of her eye and, with a backward twist of her body, went on: “It’s a habit one must get into.”

  Then, as her hair, which she had pinned up loosely, was coming down and falling over her shoulders, she rose, went up to a mirror and began to re-arrange it, talking as she did so:

  “When I left America a little later, I felt as if I were the golden fleece starting off in search of a conqueror. I may sometimes have been foolish … I may sometimes have made mistakes—perhaps I am making one now in talking to you like this—but you, on your side, don’t imagine that because I have given myself to you, you have won me. Make certain of this—I abominate mediocrity and I can love no one who isn’t a conqueror. If you want me, it must be to help you to victory; if it’s only to be pitied and consoled and made much of … no, my dear boy—I’d better say so at once—I’m not the person you need—it’s Laura.”

  She said all this without turning round and while she was continuing to arrange her rebellious locks, but Vincent caught her eye in the glass.

  “May I give you my answer this evening?” he said, getting up and taking off his oriental garments to get into his day clothes. “I must go home quickly now so as to catch my brother Olivier before he goes out. I’ve got something to say to him.”

  He said it by way of apology, to give colour to his departure; but when he went up to Lilian, she turned round to him smiling, and so lovely that he hesitated.

  “Unless I leave a line for him to get at lunch time,” he added.

  “Do you see a great deal of him?”

  “Hardly anything. No, it’s an invitation for this afternoon, which I’ve got to pass on to him.”

  “From Robert?… Oh! I see!1 …” she said, smiling oddly. “That’s a person, too, I must talk to you about.… All right! Go at once. But come back at six o’clock, because at seven his car is coming to take us out to dinner in the Bois.”

  Vincent walks home, meditating as he goes; he realizes that from the satisfaction of desire ther
e may arise, accompanying joy and as it were sheltering behind it, something not unlike despair.

  1 In English in the original.

  VIII : Edouard and Laura

  Il faut choisir d’aimer les femmes ou de les connaître; il n’y a pas de milieu.

  CHAMFORT.

  Edouard, as he sits in the Paris express, is reading Passavant’s new book, The Horizontal Bar, which he has just bought at the Dieppe railway station. No doubt he will find the book waiting for him when he gets to Paris, but Edouard is impatient. People are talking of it everywhere. Not one of his own books has ever had the honour of figuring on station book-stalls. He has been told, it is true, that it would be an easy matter to arrange, but he doesn’t care to. He repeats to himself that he hasn’t the slightest desire to see his books in railway stations—but it is the sight of Passavant’s book that makes him feel the need of repeating it. Everything that Passavant does, and everything that other people do round about him, rubs Edouard up the wrong way: the newspaper articles, for instance, in which his book is praised up to the skies. It’s as if it were a wager; in every one of the three papers that he buys on landing, there is a eulogy of The Horizontal Bar. In the fourth there is a letter from Passavant, complaining of an article which had recently appeared in the same paper and which had been a trifle less flattering than the others. Passavant writes defending and explaining his book. This letter irritates Edouard even more than the articles. Passavant pretends to enlighten public opinion—in reality he cleverly directs it. None of Edouard’s books has ever given rise to such a crop of articles; but, for that matter, Edouard has never made the slightest attempt to attract the favour of the critics. If they turn him the cold shoulder, it is a matter of indifference to him. But as he reads the articles on his rival’s book, he feels the need of assuring himself again that it is a matter of indifference.