The Eternal Flame

by Michel Corday

  I swear to God that that old quarrel has no influence on my resolution. We don’t speak to one another; we ignore one another when we pass in the street. It’s become a sort of habit, a tradition, that’s all. I ought to mention, however, that that unpleasantness had had indirect consequences for us. Even at the most critical moments, my father, a modest inventor on a small scale, has never asked for help from the powerful François Thibault, greatly enriched by the discovery of the Starter. For his part, the latter has been easily able to ignore his neighbor’s difficulties. That’s why we have had to put ourselves in the hands of the mayor, Marigot, in spite of his miserly cunning.

  No, no, no base jealousy guides me. I’ve always heard my father praise the genius of François Thibault, whom he considers to be a great man. And I had no animosity against him myself until the recent day when, in a speech at a prize-giving in Briolle, he showed that pernicious utopian spirit, which has now become criminal and intolerable.

  This morning, therefore, I went to Bellevue. It’s definitely there that François Thibault lives. A warden gave me the information. His laboratory and his residence are built in a sort of public garden on the edge of the famous terrace that overlooks Paris. The small detached house where the inventor was living when he discovered the Starter still exists, but it’s no longer anything but a guest-house, eclipsed by a sumptuous villa that he constructed as his fortune grew.

  Every day François Thibault works in his laboratory at the Study Center. Every day, at the same times, he follows the same paths to return to his home. It’s there that, hidden behind a bush, I’ll shoot the traitor. For it is written: Pacifism is an outrage against honor.

  Chapter X

  (Thursday)

  Nine o’clock in the evening. Pierre Arnage was anxious, worn out. Sometimes, he leapt up from his armchair, as if the springs in the seat had suddenly unwound. Then he walked back and forth in the ample and solemn study of the Ministry. The raw light of the electric chandelier struck the wallpaper and the old furniture, created under softer lit and made for it, too harshly. He opened a book, a file, scanned a page without taking any of it in, and then slumped again into a chair at his desk.

  That same morning, his wife had gone back to Briolle. Offended by her husband’s curt and gruff manner, by his determination not to explain himself or apologize—the fact is that it would have been odious to him—she had beaten a retreat. Without recriminations, patient and proud at the same time, she had ceded the ground to him, and left him disconcerted, in the dark regarding his intentions.

  Then Marilène had come back to Paris. He was expecting her now. She had telephoned him during the day to notify him of her arrival and her visit. Prudently, she had adopted the tone of a petty employee talking to the big boss. Entering into the game, he had remained very “high and mighty” on the phone, to such an extent that he had known nothing about the reasons for her abrupt return—but it had not augured anything good.

  Another worry. It would doubtless be necessary for him to leave, the day after tomorrow, for The Hague. All the States of the European Union had resolved, the previous day, to submit their litigation urgently to the International Court of Justice. Given the unprecedented importance of the conflict, they had all decided to delegate to The Hague their Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Ministers of Justice.

  Arnage deplored the necessity of accompanying Ducros, that megalomaniac gnome who, dreaming of cuts and bruises for others, had allowed his jubilation to burst forth three days ago. He disapproved, for, deep down, he remained human. Like all politicians, he affected a blasé, mocking, integral skepticism, but for him, as for the majority, it was merely a suit of armor, a ceremonial clothing, like an officer’s dress uniform or an academician’s green gown. They would have been embarrassed to seem sensible. They hid their hearts as one hides one’s sexual organs.

  Had it not cost him, on that excessively heavy day, to relay the Council’s decision to François Thibault? Obviously, he was only a messenger. The chore had only fallen to him because the inventor had come to him, but it was no less disagreeable for that. Personally, he thought that the great man—the very great man—had talked sense. He knew full well that the warmongers were fabricating public opinion, that they were imprinting it in minds thanks to their press, which they were patiently prepared to convince the crowd of the unavoidable necessity of war. And he was secretly enraged to feel that he and his colleagues had fallen victim in their turn to those suggested hatreds.

  Having simply knocked, Marilène came in. No usher was accompanying her; she was one of the family. Emotional and valiant, she smiled. Arnage locked the door, even though his mind was scarcely turned in the direction of pleasure. They exchanged awkward caresses and stumbling words, which did not connect up. Then he made her sit down and asked her, without further delay: “What’s happened?”

  “A silly story. Yesterday, I spent the day in Lausanne. I came back to Geneva late. My father was waiting for me. He was impatient with anxiety. We quarreled. Things got heated. He finished up voicing his suspicions.”

  Arnage glimpsed an immediate scandal: the functionary standing up against a sitting minister. Life ebbed within him. In a hoarse voice, he enquired: “What? He knows?”

  “His maidservant, who is devoted to him—too devoted—detests me. She must have been spying on me, noticing signs, sickness...”

  She fell silent momentarily. Even before the man to whom she has refused nothing, a woman is reluctant to talk about the indignities that nature imposes upon her. She went on: “I didn’t want to deny it. What good would it do? He’d still have found out. Naturally, I didn’t name you. He was even more irritated by that. He’s a man of another age. To have a child outside marriage still seems like a crime to him. In brief, he was so hard, so abominable, that I left the room, and decided to come back this morning.”

  Arnage was silent in his turn. He wanted to persuade himself that all this was impossible, that he was having a bad dream. He sought in vain to pull himself together, to get a grip.

  She said to him, softly: “Don’t be sad. I don’t want you to worry about me. You don’t have to...”

  Furious at putting on such a poor show, Arnage experienced an unhealthy need to retreat, to be alone. He appealed to hazard to put an end to the conversation. He was astonished that the organism was capable of such contradictions, that one could wish, almost with identical force, for both the arrival and the departure of a beloved woman.

  It was Marilène who broke the silence. She put a hand on the desk and said, slowly: “Pierre, do you believe that one can love two people simultaneously?”

  He thought that she was asking about him. Doubtless she wanted to know whether he was simultaneously experiencing tender feelings for his wife and for her. He replied, in a grave and penetrating tone: “Yes, I believe it’s possible.”

  She seemed relieved, and said, swiftly: “Isn’t it? I think so too. You know what you are to me...what I think of you…such a superior man…a demigod. Well, I’ve met an old friend, who, naturally, doesn’t exist by comparison with you, but who has shown himself so good, so tender, so affectionate, and so attentive, that he’s truly touched me. Oh—you know the name. He’s a reporter…Jean Liseray.”

  “That petty journalist!” he grated.

  She did not react to the hurtful intention. He understood that she did not want to say anything for the moment, but that in reality, she had faith in Jean Liseray’s talent.

  “Yesterday,” she continued, “I went to Lausanne with him...”

  The Minister got up. “What?”

  “Yes. Every time he returns to France he comes to see me. This time, he was coming back from a long voyage to South America. First he told me that he wanted to marry me and asked me to think about it, but when we learned that the news had got worse, that war seemed imminent, he became more pressing. He wanted a reply.”

  She smiled weakly. “It was definitely a day for confessions, for I thought it honest to
tell him why I couldn’t accept. I didn’t tell him your name either. Anyway, he didn’t ask me. And as he’s very good, very chic, he maintained his proposal. He offered to marry me, without asking for anything in return, as a passport in life for my child and myself.”

  Arnage was striding back and forth, head down, his hands behind his back. What he had heard left him incredulous. More than ever, he hoped that he was dreaming. He sniggered. “Yes, yes. Familiar, the blank marriage. No one holds to it.”

  Then, standing in front of her, he said, in a concentrated voice: “In sum, do you love him?”

  “I’m more than grateful to him. Besides, didn’t you agree yourself that one can love two people at the same time.

  He exploded. “Did I know what I was saying? I thought you were talking hypothetically, in the void—or that you were setting a trap for me. No, no. It’s not possible. You’re not envisaging being someone else’s...”

  He thought he was watching an atrocious film. A man, someone other than him, younger and more virile, was substituting himself for him with Marilène, striking the same attitudes, enjoying the same liberties, the same kindnesses... That burned his eyes like a handful of pepper. He thought he was going to cry. But he was suffering at least as much from pride as jealousy. What? The woman who adored him like a god—she had said so a moment ago—had been able to listen to another man, to welcome him, to give him a place in her heart? She dared to give him a rival—him, Pierre Arnage!

  He repeated: “No, it’s not possible.”

  “But Pierre, I don’t know myself what I’m going to do.”

  He became suddenly humble. “Marilène, if this is a test you’re subjecting me through, you can admit it now. It’s succeeded. Yes, I see it now. I don’t love anyone but you.”

  He was sincere. He told himself, to justify his volte-face in his own eyes, that he was playing a part, that he was attempting to reconquer her by vanity, to tear her away from the other, but in reality, she had become dearer to him since he had been threatened with losing her.

  He discovered her. Never had he found her as radiant. A splendor. Everything about her became precious to him, necessary to him: her tight little mouth, her profound and brilliant eyes, her scintillating grace.

  The desire obsessed him to accompany her to Billancourt, to the dwelling that had sheltered their encounters for two years. He leaned toward her: “Let’s leave together. Let’s go home. I’ll be good. Just to be close to you…to feel you beside me...”

  She refused with a slow movement of the head. Since two men were soliciting her, she no longer wanted to yield to either of them. She was reserving herself.

  Arnage was maddened by that resistance.

  “And what if I free myself? What if I get a divorce? You’d no longer have any need for anyone else’s help, for this passport, as you call it...”

  She stood up. “No, no. I don’t want that. Your wife hasn’t done anything. You don’t have the right to abandon her.”

  “In sum,” he cried, “you’ve really decided to marry that scribbler? That’s what you’ve come to tell me?”

  She repeated, in a weary tone, as she headed for the door. “No! I came to confide in you…my worry, my embarrassment...”

  He was no longer listening. Again, the implacable film unrolled before his eyes. No, he did not want her to be another’s. He would prevent it, at any price. Yes, rather a catastrophe that would shatter and annihilate all his plans. Let war break out, let the planet blow up. But not this film, not this film...

  Chapter XI

  (Friday)

  The day after making his decision, at seven o’clock in the morning in Paris, François Thibault sent the agreed signal to the four stations at Fraicourt, Ottawa, Tokyo and Tomsk. They were the words that, four years before, on the anniversary of Briand’s10 death, the children of all nations pronounced, as they threw flowers on the tomb of the great human being who had been able to incarnate the universal hope: “For world peace.”

  PART TWO

  (Which unfolds on Friday in its entirety)

  Chapter I

  The limpid morning was still scintillating with dew. The nacre of the dawn seemed to be lingering in the sky. In the garden on the terrace at Bellevue, Emile Truchard was crouched behind a lilac bush. In the right had pocket of his jacket, his hand as clutching the butt of his revolver. He was lying in wait for François Thibault, who was pass close by as he went from his house to his laboratory.

  He was ready to kill him, but he did not feel completely in possession of himself. The perfume of the lilacs, the clusters of which were brushing his cheeks, must have dazed and intoxicated him. Without taking his eyes off the threshold of the villa, he strove to pull himself together, to get a grip.

  But François Thibault appeared at the top of the front steps. His son was with him. Emile Truchard had not anticipated that complication. Bah! It wouldn’t prevent anything.

  The two men came down the steps and then advanced at a tranquil pace. Their vices, animated and cordial, resonated in the crystalline air.

  Emile Truchard brought his weapon out of his pocket. He raised it to the height of his eyes, for practice. It was trembling slightly. But François Thibault was still twenty meters away. There was no urgency. He let his arm fall back, in order not to tire it needlessly.

  For the first time in his life, he heard his heart beating with dull thuds, which echoed all the way to his throat. The thought went through him of the other heart—the one that would soon cease to beat. It compelled him to imagine that man full of vigor, haloed in glory, who was advancing defenselessly toward death—who, in a moment, would collapse, would be no more than a heap of flesh in a pool of blood.

  That vision frightened him.

  Immediately, he invoked his reasons for hatred, but they fled his memory...

  He tried to appeal to his rescue those whose faith he shared, those who had given it to him, his comrades and his gods—all those, in sum, who were waiting for him to act, all those whose wish he was about to grant, whose suffrage he was about to merit, whose delight he was about to unleash…but he could not find their faces. He could no longer hear them. The link that bound them to him seemed to have broken...

  A new and unexpected circumstance presented itself: the two men, leaving the path to the Laboratory, were heading toward the terrace; they would not go past the lilac bush.

  Emile Truchard felt relieved. It would always be easy for him to get close to François Thibault, and this respite accorded him by change would permit him to get a grip on himself. Inhaling deeply, he drew air into the depths of his lungs, in order to ignite a more ardent life there. The more he breathed, however, the more he had a sensation of being detached from himself and uplifted. He emerged into a new world, as clear, as luminous and as crystalline as the marvelous morning.

  François Thibault and his son had stopped at the stone parapet overlooking Paris. Their silhouettes, similar in height, the one massive and powerful, the other slim and lithe, stood out against that singular sky, in which the dawn still seemed to be smiling.

  At that moment, the father put his arm around his son’s shoulders. That simple gesture moved Emile Truchard. Great man as he might be, the inventor was a man like any other. He had a wife and children. They were attached to him and would suffer if he died...

  Emile did not blush at that human compassion. He did not consider it to be fairy-tale sentimentality. He became inebriated by it as a natural wine, honest in taste, and new to him. He took delight in it. Yes, François Thibault was a man like others, a man like him. They both had the same organs, the same needs, the same penchants, the same weaknesses. They had doubtless shared in the admiration of the same masterpieces. They must be taking equal delight in that marvelous morning, in which the sky seemed to be made of a single rose petal traversed by light.

  And they undoubtedly had the same good faith. Emile, sat that moment, looked down on their opposed doctrines as one sees cities from the height of
an aircraft. He compared them. One loved the city of the past, where force triumphed, the other the city of the future, where mildness would reign. And both were extending their arms toward their ideal with the same sincere impulse.

  Clouds split, revealing new perspectives to his eyes. How could anyone suspect François Thibault of betraying his country? Thanks to him, was not his fatherland the cradle of the most prodigious discovery, with infinite consequences?

  Obviously, the inventor wanted to prevent the war. Since Emile had escaped himself, however, since he believed that he was more alive, and living an improved life in an increased light, the maxims pinned to the wall of his room had come to seem outdated, like the inscriptions engraved on the lintel of a ruin. Their author was indicating, in fact, that war served the genius of the species, that it was the rude preface of love, that it revealed the strongest, the most virile, and the most masculine, like the nuptial flight of bees. Perhaps that had been true in the days of hand-to-hand fighting. But modern warfare, on the contrary, sacrificing youth and preserving old men, was an inverse selection.

  Meanwhile, François Thibault drew away from the parapet. He retracted his steps. Doubtless he would go to the laboratory, past the clump of lilac bushes. Again, Emile perceived the muffled explosions of his heart. Momentarily, the inventor passed so close that he might have heard them. Keeping his weapon at the end of his lowered arm, however, Emile Truchard did not shoot...

  And he felt immediately uplifted by joy. He repeated to himself: “I have not killed…I have not killed...”

  It seemed to him that he had just escaped death himself. It appeared to him that the first rule of life really was respect for life. He would have liked to confess the frightful temptation, to obtain absolution, to proclaim his delight and his deliverance. He had wings.