The Counterfeiters: A Novel Page 8

  “When we get opposite Condorcet,” he kept repeating to himself, “I shall say, ‘I must go home now; good-bye.’ ”

  Then, when they got opposite the Lycée, he gave himself till as far as the corner of the Rue de Provence. But Edouard, on whom the silence was weighing quite as heavily, could not endure that they should part in this way. He drew his companion into a café. Perhaps the port wine which he ordered would help them to get the better of their embarrassment.

  They drank to each other.

  “Good luck to you!” said Edouard, raising his glass. “When is the examination?”

  “In ten days.”

  “Do you feel ready?”

  Olivier shrugged his shoulders. “One never knows. If one doesn’t happen to be in good form on the day …”

  He didn’t dare answer “yes,” for fear of seeming conceited. He was embarrassed, too, because he wanted and yet was afraid to say “thou” to Edouard. He contented himself by giving his sentences an impersonal turn, so as to avoid at any rate saying “you”; and by so doing he deprived Edouard of the opportunity of begging him to say “thou”—which Edouard longed for him to do and which he remembered well enough he had done a few days before his leaving for England.

  “Have you been working?”

  “Pretty well, but not as well as I might have.”

  “People who work well always think they might work better,” said Edouard rather pompously.

  He said it in spite of himself and then thought his sentence ridiculous.

  “Do you still write poetry?”

  “Sometimes … I badly want a little advice.” He raised his eyes to Edouard. “Your advice,” he wanted to say—“thy advice.” And his look, in default of his voice, said it so plainly that Edouard thought he was saying it out of deference—out of amiability. But why should he have answered—and so brusquely too …?

  “Oh, one must go to oneself for advice, or to companions of one’s own age. One’s elders are no use.”

  Olivier thought: “I didn’t ask him. Why is he protesting?”

  Each of them was vexed with himself for not being able to utter a word that didn’t sound curt and stiff; and each of them, feeling the other’s embarrassment and irritation, thought himself the cause and object of them. Such interviews lead to no good unless something comes to the rescue. Nothing came.

  Olivier had begun the morning badly. When, on waking up, he had found that Bernard was no longer beside him, that he had left him without saying good-bye, his heart had been filled with unhappiness; though he had forgotten it for an instant in the joy of seeing Edouard, it now surged up in him anew like a black wave and submerged every other thought in his mind. He would have liked to talk about Bernard, to tell Edouard everything and anything, to make him interested in his friend.

  But Edouard’s slightest smile would have wounded him; and as the passionate and tumultuous feelings which were shaking him could not have been expressed without the risk of seeming exaggerated, he kept silence. He felt his features harden; he would have liked to fling himself into Edouard’s arms and cry. Edouard misunderstood this silence of Olivier’s and the look of sternness on his face; he loved him far too much to be able to behave with any ease. He hardly dared look at Olivier, whom he longed to take in his arms and fondle like a child, and when he met his eyes and saw their dull and lifeless expression:

  “Of course!” he said to himself. “I bore him—I bore him to death. Poor child! He’s just waiting for a word from me to escape.” And irresistibly Edouard said the word—out of sheer pity: “You’d better be off now. Your people are expecting you for lunch, I’m sure.”

  Olivier, who was thinking the same things, misunderstood in the same way. He got up in a desperate hurry and held out his hand. At least he wanted to say to Edouard: “Shall I see you—thee—again soon? Shall we see each other again soon?” … Edouard was waiting for these words. Nothing came but a commonplace “Good-bye!”

  X : The Cloak-Room Ticket

  The sun woke Bernard. He rose from his bench with a violent headache. His gallant courage of the morning had left him. He felt abominably lonely and his heart was swelling with something brackish and bitter which he would not call unhappiness, but which brought the tears to his eyes. What should he do? Where should he go?… If his steps turned towards St. Lazare Station at the time that he knew Olivier was due there, it was without any definite purpose and merely with the wish to see his friend again. He reproached himself for having left so abruptly that morning; perhaps Olivier had been hurt?… Was he not the creature in the world he liked best?… When he saw him arm in arm with Edouard a peculiar feeling made him follow the pair and at the same time not show himself; painfully conscious of being de trop, he would yet have liked to slip in between them. He thought Edouard looked charming; only a little taller than Olivier and with a scarcely less youthful figure. It was he whom he made up his mind to address; he would wait until Olivier left him. But address him? Upon what pretext?

  It was at this moment that he caught sight of the little bit of crumpled paper as it escaped from Edouard’s hand. He picked it up, saw that it was a cloak-room ticket … and, by Jove, here was the wished-for pretext!

  He saw the two friends go into a café, hesitated a moment in perplexity, and then continued his monologue:

  “Now a normal fathead would have nothing better to do than to return this paper at once,” he said to himself.

  “ ‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable

  Seem to me all the uses of this world!’

  as I have heard Hamlet remark. Bernard, Bernard, what thought is this that is tickling you? It was only yesterday that you were rifling a drawer. On what path are you entering? Consider, my boy, consider.… Consider that the cloak-room attendant who took Edouard’s luggage will be gone to his lunch at 12 o’clock, and that there will be another one on duty. And didn’t you promise your friend to stick at nothing?”

  He reflected, however, that too much haste might spoil everything. The attendant might be surprised into thinking this haste suspicious; he might consult the entry book and think it unnatural that a piece of luggage deposited in the cloak-room a few minutes before twelve, should be taken out immediately after. And besides, suppose some passer-by, some busy-body, had seen him pick up the bit of paper.… Bernard forced himself to walk to the Place de la Concorde without hurrying—in the time it would have taken another person to lunch. It is quite usual, isn’t it, to put one’s luggage in the cloak-room whilst one is lunching and to take it out immediately after.… His headache had gone. As he was passing by a restaurant terrace, he boldly took a toothpick from one of the little bundles that were set out on the tables, and stood nibbling it at the cloak-room counter, in order to give himself the air of having lunched. He was lucky to have in his favour his good looks, his well-cut clothes, his distinction, the frankness of his eyes and smile, and that indefinable something in the whole appearance which denotes those who have been brought up in comfort and want for nothing. (But all this gets rather draggled by sleeping on benches.) …

  He had a horrible turn when the attendant told him there were ten centimes to pay. He had not a single sou left. What should he do? The suit-case was there, on the counter. The slightest sign of hesitation would give the alarm—so would his want of money. But the demon is watching over him; he slips between Bernard’s anxious fingers, as they go searching from pocket to pocket with a pretence of feigned despair, a fifty-centime bit, which had lain forgotten since goodness knows when in his waistcoat pocket. Bernard hands it to the attendant. He has not shown a sign of his agitation. He takes up the suit-case, and in the simplest, honestest fashion pockets the forty centimes change. Heavens! How hot he is! Where shall he go now? His legs are beginning to fail him and the suit-case feels heavy. What shall he do with it?… He suddenly remembers that he has no key. No! No! Certainly not! He will not break open the lock; what the devil, he isn’t a thief!… But if he only knew what was in it.
His arm is aching and he is perspiring with the heat. He stops for a moment and puts his burden down on the pavement. Of course he has every intention of returning the wretched thing to its owner; but he would like to question it first. He presses the lock at a venture.… Oh miracle! The two shells open and disclose a pearl—a pocket-book, which in its turn discloses a bundle of bank-notes. Bernard seizes the pearl and shuts up the oyster.

  And now that he has the wherewithal—quick! a hotel. He knows of one close by in the Rue d’Amsterdam. He is dying of hunger. But before sitting down to table, he must put his suit-case in safety. A waiter carries it upstairs before him; three flights; a passage; a door which he locks upon his treasure. He goes down again.

  Sitting at table in front of a beefsteak, Bernard did not dare examine the pocket-book. (One never knows who may be watching you.) But his left hand amorously caressed it, lying snug in his inside pocket.

  “How to make Edouard understand that I’m not a thief—that’s the trouble. What kind of fellow is Edouard? Perhaps the suit-case may shed a little light upon that. Attractive—so much is certain. But there are heaps of attractive fellows who have no taste for practical joking. If he thinks his suit-case has been stolen, no doubt he’ll be glad to see it again. If he’s the least decent he’ll be grateful to me for bringing it back to him. I shall easily rouse his interest. Let’s eat the sweet quickly and then go upstairs and examine the situation. Now for the bill and a soul-stirring tip for the waiter.”

  A minute or two later he was back again in his room.

  “Now, suit-case, a word with you!… A morning suit, not more than a trifle too big for me, I expect. The material becoming and in good taste. Linen; toilet things. I’m not very sure that I shall give any of all this back. But what proves that I’m not a thief is that these papers interest me a great deal more than anything else. We’ll begin by reading this.”

  This was the note-book into which Edouard had slipped Laura’s menancholy letter. We have already seen the first pages; this is what followed.

  XI : Edouard’s Journal: George Molinier

  Nov. 1st.—A fortnight ago …

  —it was a mistake not to have noted it down at once. It was not so much that I hadn’t time as that my heart was still full of Laura—or, to be more accurate, I did not wish to distract my thoughts from her; moreover, I do not care to note anything here that is casual or fortuitous, and at that time I did not think that what I am going to relate could lead to anything, or be, as people say, of any consequence; at any rate, I would not admit it to myself and it was, in a way, to prove the unimportance of this incident that I refrained from mentioning it in my journal. But I feel more and more—it would be vain to deny it—that it is Olivier’s figure that has now become the magnet of my thoughts, that their current sets towards him and that without taking him into account I shall be able neither to explain nor to understand myself properly.

  I was coming back that morning from Perrin’s, the publisher’s, where I had been seeing about the press copies of the fresh edition of my old book. As the weather was fine, I was dawdling back along the quays until it should be time for lunch.

  A little before getting to Vanier’s, I stopped in front of a second-hand bookseller’s. It was not so much the books that interested me as a small schoolboy, about thirteen years old, who was rummaging the outside shelves under the placid eye of a shop assistant, who sat watching on a rush-bottomed chair in the door-way. I pretended to be examining the bookstall, but I too kept a watch on the youngster out of the corner of my eye. He was dressed in a threadbare overcoat, the sleeves of which were too short and showed his other sleeves below them. Its side pocket was gaping, though it was obviously empty; a corner of the stuff had given way. I reflected that this coat must have already seen service with several elder brothers and that his brothers and he must have been in the habit of stuffing a great many, too many, things into their pockets. I reflected too that his mother must be either very neglectful or very busy not to have mended it. But just then the youngster turned round a little and I saw that the pocket on the other side was coarsely darned with stout black thread. And I seemed to hear the maternal exhortations: “Don’t put two books at a time into your pocket; you’ll ruin your overcoat. Your pocket’s all torn again. Next time, I warn you, I shan’t darn it. Just look what a sight you are! …” Things which my own poor mother used to say to me, too, and to which I paid no more attention than he. The overcoat was unbuttoned and my eye was attracted by a kind of decoration, a bit of ribbon, or rather a yellow rosette which he was wearing in the button hole of his inside coat. I put all this down for the sake of discipline and for the very reason that it bores me to put it down.

  At a certain moment the man on the chair was called into the shop; he did not stay more than a second and came back to his chair at once, but that second was enough to allow the boy to slip the book he was holding into his pocket; then he immediately began scanning the shelves again as if nothing had happened. At the same time he was uneasy; he raised his head, caught me looking at him and understood that I had seen him. At any rate, he said to himself that I might have seen him; he was probably not quite certain; but in his uncertainty he lost all his assurance, blushed and started a little performance in which he tried to appear quite at his ease, but which, on the contrary, showed extreme embarrassment. I did not take my eyes off him. He took the purloined book out of his pocket, thrust it back again, walked away a few steps, pulled out of his inside pocket a wretched little pocket-book, in which he pretended to look for some imaginary money; made a face, a kind of theatrical grimace, aimed at me, and signifying, “Drat! Not enough!” and with a little shade of surprise in it as well, “Odd! I thought I had enough!” The whole thing slightly exaggerated, slightly overdone, as when an actor is afraid of not being understood. Finally, under the pressure of my look, I might almost say, he went back to the shelf, pulled the book, this time decidedly, out of his pocket and put it back in its place. It was done so naturally that the assistant noticed nothing. Then the boy raised his head again, hoping that at last he would be rid of me. But not at all; my look was still upon him, like the eye that watched Cain—only my eye was a smiling one. I determined to speak to him and waited until he should have left the bookstall before going up to him; but he didn’t budge and still stood planted in front of the books, and I understood that he wouldn’t budge as long as I kept gazing at him. So, as at Puss in the Corner, when one tries to entice the pretence quarry to change places, I moved a little away as if I had seen enough and he started off at once in his own direction; but he had no sooner got into the open than I caught him up.

  “What was that book?” I asked him out of the blue, at the same time putting as much amenity as I could into my voice and expression.

  He looked me full in the face and I felt all his suspicions drop from him. He was not exactly handsome, perhaps, but what charming eyes he had! I saw every kind of feeling wavering in their depths like water weeds at the bottom of a stream.

  “It’s a guide-book for Algeria. But it’s too dear. I’m not rich enough.”

  “How much?”

  “Two francs fifty.”

  “All the same, if you hadn’t seen me, you’d have made off with the book in your pocket.”

  The little fellow made a movement of indignation. He expostulated in a tone of extreme vulgarity:

  “Well, I never! What d’you take me for? A thief?” But he said it with such conviction that I almost began to doubt my own eyes. I felt that I should lose my hold over him if I went on. I took three coins out of my pocket:

  “All right! Go and buy it. I’ll wait for you.”

  Two minutes later he came back turning over the pages of the coveted work. I took it out of his hands. It was an old guide-book of the year 1871.

  “What’s the good of that?” I said as I handed it back to him. “It’s too old. It’s of no use.”

  He protested that it was—that, besides, recent guide-books we
re much too dear, and that for all he should do with it the maps of this one were good enough. I don’t attempt to quote his words, which would lose their savour without the extraordinarily vulgar accent with which he said them and which was all the more amusing because his sentences were not turned without a certain elegance.

  This episode must be very much shortened. Precision in the reader’s imagination should be obtained not by accumulating details but by two or three touches put in exactly the right places. I expect for that matter that it would be a better plan to make the boy tell the story himself; his point of view is of more signification than mine. He is flattered and at the same time made uncomfortable by the attention I pay him. But the weight of my look makes him deviate a little from his own real direction. A personality which is over-tender and still too young to be conscious of itself takes shelter behind an attitude. Nothing is more difficult to observe than creatures in the period of formation. One ought to look at them only sideways—in profile.

  The youngster suddenly declared that what he liked best was geography! I suspected that an instinct for vagabonding was concealed behind this liking.

  “You’d like to go to those parts?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t I?” he answered, shrugging his shoulders.

  The idea crossed my mind that he was unhappy at home. I asked him if he lived with his parents. “Yes.” Didn’t he get on with them? He protested rather lukewarmly that he did. He seemed afraid that he had given himself away by what he had just said. He added:

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Oh, for nothing,” I answered, and then, touching the yellow ribbon in his buttonhole, “What’s that?”