The Eternal Flame

by Michel Corday

  “I told them that we don’t have any instructions.”

  “You asked them to be patient?”

  “A little.”

  “So you believe in marriage?”

  “Why not? Those people won’t be alone; they have a chance of being happy.”

  She had smiled softly at those last words. He had noticed then that she had the most appetizing smile, with teeth like fresh almonds. And a secret voice had cried out to him: “Marry her, then, you old skinflint. Marry her. See how pleasant she is, as soon as she wants to be. What? She has no money? But what does that have to do with it? You’re rich enough for two. At least let your hoard serve for something. This is an opportunity to cure yourself of your filthy avarice, to extirpate it in your entrails. You sense that she loves you, this young woman, and is only hiding it out of pride. Be generous, for the first time in your life. You’ll see how content one is, how joyful one is, when one has made a nice gesture. Come on, surpass yourself. Be superior to yourself. Have wings. Consent to happiness. Try it.”

  He had tried. He had picked up the list of banns in two fingers, and in a falsely light tone he had said: “What if the two of us were to be inscribed here? What do you think?”

  Oh, with what fervor she had thrown herself into the arms he had opened to her. What rewards, what treasures of tenderness he had glimpsed. How well she had sealed the pact with the magnificent signet of her lips...

  And since he had been obliged to return to his office, he had heard, thanks to the gap in the doorway, the sound of her happiness passing into Jeanne’s voice and laughter...

  Outside, he walked with a lighter step. He had wings. He felt truly liberated from his avarice. Why should he not be cured of it? Human defects are not necessarily eternal. One could therefore get rid of them, as one could now get rid of a useless or dangerous organ. Wasn’t the appendix taken out, for the greater profit of the entire being?

  He had always blushed secretly at the vice with which he knew himself to be afflicted. But now that he had extirpated it and had held it up to the light before his eyes, he perceived all its hideousness.

  Amassing money—what a dirty and stupid folly! Was it not, fundamentally, that of the false paupers found dead of starvation in their mansards on mattresses stuffed with bills and bonds, crawling with vermin? One accumulates wealth of which a revolution, or even a change of regime or a crisis might dispossess us, which an unexpected death might prevent us from enjoying.

  Miserliness...what base acts it constrains us to commit, how much pain, anguish and sweat it costs us, what privations it imposes upon us. Except for the solitary pleasure of avarice, it constrains us to ignore all the joys of life, from the humblest to the most delicate, and especially the supreme joy, which is that of giving.

  At the sight of Truchard’s shop, Marigot reproached himself for having pressed and pestered that unfortunate man, who was already struggling amid the worst difficulties. Behold the faults of stinginess, which constrain you to be inhuman!

  He resolved to grant the small-scale manufacturer delays and facilities, in order to appease his remorse and make someone happy. With a great surge of generosity that lifted him off the ground, he would have liked to share his joy with the entire world.

  But Truchard, who was repairing a set, was already displaying a radiant visage. Joy was particular touching in that man, who seemed doomed to misfortune. One sensed that his large sad features were not in the habit of expressing joy. It appeared there as a stranger.

  “Ah, Monsieur Marigot! We’ve very happy. Emile has made peace with the Thibault son. He met him at Bellevue this morning. They talked—and he came back right away to tell us the good news. He’s here. He kissed his mother.”

  This was a new source of satisfaction for the mayor. Since he had found out about the obscure threats made by Emile Truchard against François Thibault, he had been hesitating, torn between reluctance to denounce the constructor’s son and the fear of abetting a crime by his silence. This reconciliation got him out of the difficulty.

  “Yes,” continued Truchard, who seemed very excited, “I’m very happy. Emile has shown me the example; I shall do likewise. When François Thibault and I meet, we pretend not to see one another, and we don’t even know why any longer. I, who admire him so much…for he’s a very great man, you know. Often, I’ve wanted to tell him that, when our paths crossed—but no; I’ve turned my head. But now, I’ll no longer hold back.”

  “Well, everything’s perfect,” said Marigot. “And look: good news comes in series. I came in just now to tell you that I’ve reflected since the other evening. Take your time to settle our arrangement. There’s no hurry. Concentrate on your work. No, no, it’s not as meritorious as that. I’ve seen things clearly, that’s all. It isn’t by knocking you down that I’d have permitted you to get back on your feet.” And to cut short Truchard’s thanks, he asked: “And how is your wife?”

  “Well, imagine that, she feels better this morning. She’s a woman, you see, who had no desire to get better. She was letting herself go. Now, she’s hanging on again; she’s recovered her appetite for life. Since waking up this morning, I’ve felt hopeful myself, with courage in my heart. Perhaps I’ve given it to her. After all, panic is infectious, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t confidence be infectious too? Well, there it is.”

  His son was the same. Both of them seemed transfigured. While the mayor shook hands with Emile, Truchard, having finished his repair, tried the set. An organ concert emitted by a northern capital emerged through the speaker. The interior of a cathedral appeared on the screen. The sounds, sometimes powerful and full, sometimes delicate and tenuous, seemed to be coming from the nave, as profound as a gigantic conch-shell.

  All four of them listened silently. They felt, gladly, that they had escaped, one from illness, the second hatred, the third misfortune, the fourth avarice, and they all displayed luminous faces. Borne away on the wings of the music, they rose above their misery.

  Chapter IV

  At Billancourt, on the site of the old Renault factory, which had been relocated to the environs of Creil, smart villas had flowered, all decked out with verdure. The abundance and lightning rapidity of public transport had favored the spread of such pleasant and meticulous parks, of which the allotments consecutive to the world war had only been pitiful sketches. Every evening, for thirty kilometers around, guided by the aerial rails, bolides and transport rockets dispersed the population of offices, shops and workshops. As François Thibault had said: “It’s time that projectiles finally served some useful purpose.”

  The afternoon was beginning when Pierre Arnage, having got out of his car at the entrance to the Billancourt park, headed toward the shady house where Marilène lived. During his brief meal after the Council session ended he had telephoned to ask her to see him. He was leaving the next day for The Hague and he had resolved not to leave her under the impression of their painful argument of the day before—all the more so because he had changed so much, made such progress, since their quarrel in his office at the Ministry.

  Oh, how could a man give rise to such contradictory thoughts with respect to the same object? Was it conceivable that the same envelope of flesh, the same epidermis, could, so t speak, enclose beings so different, like a bottle that contained, alternately, the most troubled liquid and the clearest essence?

  He had spent an atrocious night.

  After Marilène’s departure, he had not wanted to stay in his office any longer, in the atmosphere and location of their quarrel, nor to go immediately into the large cold apartments in which one had no companions but his reflection in mirrors. He had gone out, aimlessly.

  Where should be go? He no longer had any friends, because he had not wanted to confide his liaison with Marilène to anyone in the world. He had closed the doors of his life to others two years ago—and today, when he would have liked to pour out his pain, he was alone.

  He had gone through the Tuileries, crossed the Seine and lunged i
nto the first street that opened before him. Along the closed facades he had fled his obsession—Marilène in another’s arms—with long strides. He strove to drive away that vision, which seems obscene to us as soon as we are no longer actors. At times he was almost running, uplifted by rage.

  He astonished himself with the violence of his transports. He had previously thought that novelists were forcing the tone when they depicted the maddening effects of jealousy—but no. If he had perceived he couple on the other pavement he would have run across the road, leaped upon him, and insulted him verbally, fist raised, like a brute.

  Suddenly, he stopped. His instinct had led him to the windows of the Ministry of Public Education, where he had met Marilène.

  Two years…and yet, he had not understood the young woman’s charm immediately. At first, she had seemed to him to be stiff and tense. How much time had been lost...

  In order to discover her, it had required that trip into the Dauphinoise Alps…ah! On returning, the décor of the Ministry had become so welcoming, simply because she animated it and enchanted it with her presence. The slightest corners had shielded their audacious mischief—like the hidden corridor that permitted the Minister direct access to his office, so narrow that one was obliged to embrace in order to pass along it two abreast.

  Avid to be together, taking advantage of the most trivial reception, they had also met up in all the other Ministries Together, they had savored the color and the beauty of those palaces of State: the truly regal salons of Finance, whose windows overlook the floral carpet of the Carrousel; the colonnade of Marine, overlooking the never-ending circulation of automobiles around the square that had accommodated, two centuries before, the scaffold of the king, the queen and Charlotte Corday; the small town-house of the Minister of War, juxtaposed with the Ministry like an outhouse, so harshly ornamented with panoplies and somber military paintings; the gardens of Agriculture and Commerce, which meet up and overlapped behind the facades, like lovers at a rendezvous; Foreign Affairs, whose reflection is carried away by the course of the Seine; and the distant social Ministries that had swarmed at Grenelle; and Air, which had taken flight as far as La Muette...

  He had resumed his walk though the nocturnal streets. In all the houses filled with slumber, dreams and love, existences overlapped, adapting to one another, like the stones in a wall—and at the foot of those walls warm with humanity, he ran and fled, chilled by rage and despair.

  Well, yes. He admitted it. He needed Marilène. She was essential to him. She was precious to him because she admired him, because she gave him confidence in himself. She was precious to him because she had a spangled wit, simultaneously mischievous and profound, because she communicated an incomparable savor to life. She was precious to him because she was undoubtedly his supreme conquest, because after her, his amorous career would be finished. Finally, she was precious to him because she was going away, because she was going to someone else, someone more attentive, more affectionate, younger...

  And he was going to let her be carried away and yield her treasures? He was going to shirk the contest? He was going to accept the insult—him, a man of his stripe and importance, was going to give in to this journalist? Get away! Never. He would fight, he would keep her, by any means possible. He would prevent her from going to this Jean Liseray.

  But what if he failed, though? And it was then that a voice had whispered to him, in a breath of death: “But if there’s war, all these plans will be disrupted. Marilène won’t be taken from you.” Yes, such was his delirium that he had not closed his ears to that atrocious suggestion. Obscurely, he had desired the cataclysm: that the gases, the microbes, the lightning, all the toxins, all the bombs and all the radiations should annihilate the planet, in order that Marilène should not belong to another...

  Having not gone to sleep until it was almost dawn, he woke up late, just in time to go to the Council. At first he had had the impression of emerging from a nightmare. Had he really been wandering half the night, furious and desperate, through the deserted streets? Had he really wanted war, in order that Marilène might be no one’s but his? He was horrified. As the minutes went by, he extracted himself from that bad dream, purifying himself.

  His generous excitement had increased further during the Council, where it truly seemed to have infected all his colleagues and caused them to rise above themselves. And, showing him the way, dictating his attitude, it had driven him to Marilène’s home with an invincible surge.

  They sat down side by side on the veranda, facing the garden whose tender foliage isolated it from the neighboring houses. There, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, he said to her: “We parted on bad terms yesterday evening, Marilène. I’m leaving for The Hague tomorrow. I didn’t want us to remain with that memory. I’ve reflected a great deal since that last meeting. I’m no longer the same. I’ve changed, especially since this morning. Yesterday, when I became aggressive, I was certainly obedient to my affection for you, but to its less noble aspect. I was obedient to jealousy, to pride. Last night, they inspired the worst thoughts in me. Oh, it wasn’t pretty! But now, I blush at it, I’m denouncing myself for it, in your presence...”

  She too seemed to have been infected with forbearance. “Pierre, it doesn’t matter. Let’s forget it. I was harsh too...”

  “It’s necessary that I speak. Yesterday, Marilène, I loved you, even when I was angry. But I loved you badly. This morning, I feel that I know how to love you better. You’re going to be a mother. I ought to be able to marry you, to give you the place by my side that you deserve, but I can’t abandon Annette. You recognized that; you said it yourself: she hasn’t done anything.”

  “That’s true...”

  “Only one means remains for me to contribute to your happiness, and that’s not to shackle you. It’s to efface myself, to bow down.”

  She put her hands together, in a gesture miming gratitude. “Pierre...”

  “I have no great merit, my poor love. In reality, I can’t prevent you from following your destiny. I have no right to do that. All that I’m bringing you is a promise not to put obstacles in your path, not to try to turn you aside—a promise not to compete for you with another, not to recriminate, and to help you as much as possible…”

  This time she murmured: “How good you are, Pierre...”

  “Marry Jean Liseray. I’ve been unjust toward him. Forget what I said. And above all, don’t think that, knowing myself beaten in advance, I’m merely covering my retreat with an appearance of generosity, nor that I want to flee from my responsibilities and pass them on to someone else. Such calculations are unworthy of me.”

  “I’m certain of that, Pierre.”

  “It’s costly for a man of my age to renounce a woman like you without a fight, especially if she isn’t yet entirely detached from him. It’s hard. But I promise you not to importune you with my plaints. I’ll find the strength to stifle them. I feel that. But why, today, is it the best of me that’s speaking the loudest? It seems that, since this morning, I have a clearer vision of the world, a simplified sense of things.”

  “Me too,” she said. “I’d like to rise above myself, show myself worthy of you, Pierre, you’re so generous, so exquisite... I’m hesitant... I’m afraid, whatever route I take, of doing harm, of being cruel. Oh, it would be necessary to have two lives! You must forgive me, Pierre.”

  “Forgive you! But you’d only be cruel to me if I threw myself in your path and you stepped over me. I’m effacing myself, adapting myself: you won’t crush me. Forgive you! But you’ve given me the greatest gift that one being can give another: you’ve given me your youth. And as for me, I’ve only ever given you a life unworthy of you, in the shadow of mine. But everything balances out, in the end. It’s me who, in my turn, will play an obscure role, a hidden role, in your existence—because to the child who will be born, whose father I shall be, I shall never be anything but an unknown...”

  “Pierre...”

  “Bah! T
hat’s justice. The true parents of a child are those who form him, not those who make him.”

  He had risen to his feet. While she accompanied him to his car, they only exchanged a few rare words, full of tenderness and serenity.

  “You will be the most beautiful memory of my life, Marilène.”

  “And I shall continue to admire you, Pierre, and follow your career with emotion.”

  “I would like us to think of one another with gratitude.”

  As they were saying their farewells, he made an allusion to his departure for The Hague, for the great litigation. But the light that seemed to be descending from the sky showed him war as it really was: ruinous, inhuman and stupid. It had never settled a conflict; it always laid the groundwork for another. The planet would take centuries to expiate it, if it did not perish immediately. The most imperfect of arbitrations was a hundred times more preferable.

  Thus, Arnage was able to finish reassuring Marilène about her future and that of her fiancé. As he climbed into the automobile he said to her, in good faith: “Don’t worry; there isn’t going to be a war.”

  Chapter V

  In the morning, Noblemain, the stout garage-owner of Briolle, paused in surprise at an article in his newspaper: The Starter’s Silver Wedding. François Thibault’s discovery had, indeed, been made twenty-five years ago. So, various organizations, including the Center for Studies in Physics at Bellevue, where the apparatus had been born, and the factories at Fraicourt, where it had been mass-produced, had decided to celebrate the anniversary of the prodigious invention.