The Eternal Flame

by Michel Corday

  Ordinarily, the happiness of others oppressed the envious Noblemain. Every time he learned about a recompense, a distinction, or any success whatsoever, he was hurt by it. The glory of François Thibault, so vast and so close at hand, was particularly crushing. He had even taken revenge on his genius. In the great man’s garden, on the edge of the square, stood a rustic summer-house in which he liked to sit. In two indigent lines, traced one night on a shutter, Noblemain had affirmed that the inventor had run out of inspiration. He had a weakness for couplets:

  The great François Thibault once sat here

  Striving in vain to get his brain into gear.

  Now, on that rosy morning in May, an incredible phenomenon occurred. Not only did the news of that anniversary celebration not depress Nobleman, but it even suggested to him the plan of associating Briolle with it. Why should the town of the inventor’s birth not celebrate the invention of the Starter too? Immediately, the garage-owner imagined a local committee, of which he would be the driving force. In sum, he would take care of the electricity and the mechanics himself. He was very popular in Briolle. Everything designated him as the man to take such an initiative.

  What, one might say—that jealous individual proposing to serve the glory of François Thibault after having tried in a cowardly fashion to soil it? Well, yes, that was how it was. On waking up he had felt, so to speak, liberated from his infirmity, which constrained him to such wretched gestures. He had been purged of the bile that had poisoned him: a veritable puncture had drained it, purifying him, cleaned him out. He had recovered the soul to go with his face—an open and generous soul.

  He retained nothing but shame and remorse for his baseness. Impelled by an imperious need for redemption, he wanted to undo all the effects of his villainy. What would he not have given to efface those two poor lines written on the Thibaults’ summer house? At least, he would repair it. He would furbish the glory that he had tried to tarnish.

  Obviously, it was a bad time for an apotheosis; there was the dread of war—but was the alarm really warranted? Noblemain doubted it, on such a beautiful morning. No one wanted to fight. And if no one wants war, who will make it?

  In sum, the obsession to serve the glory of François Thibault racked him so forcefully all morning that he finally had to give in to it. When he had eaten lunch, he left his garage and went to the Hôtel de Ville.

  The mayor, Marigot, was not there. Enthused by his plan, the garage-owner revealed it to the secretary, Jeanne Surène—not without a certain apprehension. She was so ill-tempered...

  But the project earned him a smile, for she welcomed it with an unprecedented good grace. “Certainly, Monsieur Noblemain…an excellent idea, Monsieur Noblemain…no one is better qualified than you, Monsieur Noblemain...” She offered to draw up a list of the notable people worthy to serve on the committee, and she promised to submit it without delay to the mayor, who ought to be just finishing his lunch.

  The fat garage-owner went down the stone steps of the Hôtel de Ville briskly. Light and lithe, he bounced from step to step like a rubber balloon. He was no more astonished to have encountered Jeanne Surène humanized than to find himself agile and fit.

  There was certainly a benevolence and delight in the air. He had observed other signs of it during the morning. Two opposed streams of cars ran incessantly past his garage, because Briolle is traversed by a major road. Usually, some of them were traveling like bolides, but since he had woken up, those insensate speeds had not been evident. Every driver seemed to have understood the folly of risking his life, and those of his passengers or pedestrians, in order to gain a few seconds in the overall journey-time. Everyone had admitted that such a slender advantage was not worth the risk of death, injury or dragging the remorse of a murder around as long as he might live. Some of them even stopped gallantly to let a woman cross the road—and she would thank him with a smile, in which the promise of a new world shone. Yes, a better world, a realizable world. For after all, what imbecile necessity prevented people from ever putting a little good grace into their dealings with one another?

  From the threshold of his garage he had noticed other changes. For instance, every morning, maidservants beat carpets noisily at the windows of the Hôtel Moderne, above the tables of the café. Proud of carrying out a duty, confident in following a tradition, they sent into the customers’ glasses all the human residues and wastes that a stay in a hotel room can conceal. Now, today that bombardment had not taken place. What mysterious voice, then, could have revealed the incongruity of the custom to them?

  Meditating on these metamorphoses, he had gone to see Marigot. The mayor had changed too. Ordinarily, his eyes suspicious, his skin jaundiced and his moustache bristling, he received visitors meanly, even if, like Noblemain, they had their ears to the ground. In order to clink glasses with them he poured them a frightful vitriol that scoured the teeth, gums and throat, which the townspeople nicknamed “the client-deterrent.” This time, by contrast, his gaze starry, his complexion clear and his manner conquering, he seemed magnificent. He offered the garage-owner a cigar as long as a forearm and an authentic brandy, warm and spirited. He waxed ecstatic about Noblemain’s project, approved Mademoiselle Surène’s list and subscribed a regal sum.

  Excited by this triumphant beginning, Noblemain went on to visit his committee members. The majority lived around the square, including the pharmacist Mirot, the pâtissier Mousseron and the bookseller Lacreté. Everywhere, the garage-owner extolled the glory of François Thibault impetuously. Previously, in public, he had commiserated with poverty and thundered against injustice, but he had never pronounced words of praise. He had been unable to do so. So they had, for him, a new and delightful taste, which intoxicated him.

  His step buoyant, he took his inflamed eloquence from one doorstep to the next. He paused momentarily in front of Truchard’s shop. The quarrel between the Thibaults and the Truchards was notorious in Briolle, even though its origins had been forgotten. The very difficult of the enterprise excited Noblemain, however. It would be all the more meritorious to triumph. He did not even have to fight, thought. He had before him luminous faces, mouths split from ear to ear. The children of the two families had been reconciled that very morning—and when Truchard heard about the garage-owner’s plan, he grabbed the opportunity to imitate his son, and get into François Thibault’s good graces, with both hands.

  Noblemain resumed his route. He was definitely encountering the same relaxed and benevolent atmosphere everywhere. All the rivalries that collided between the four walls of the square like fish in a pond seemed to have eased. The aquarium became clear. One might have thought that the town, having agreed to celebrate its hero, was getting into a party mood already. Instinctively, Noblemain looked for Venetian lanterns in the trees, garlands of flowers strung across the streets.

  Everyone seemed, like himself, to be liberated from their moral flaws, entirely given over to the joy of putting on a new skin. Fundamentally, why should people not be thus liberated someday? Since the discovery of anesthetics, which had led to the triumph of surgery, the flesh could be stripped of all that vitiated and corrupted it. Why should it not be possible one day to clean out and purify the mind? Life would seem so much more pleasant, so much easier, if it were cured of its defects. Poisoned by envy, Noblemain had suffered from all successes; since he had been liberated, he rejoiced in every one.

  No, he was not alone in feeling the benefits of such a cure. All the merchants in the square seemed to have been racked by scruples, gripped by an appetite for probity. Having become expansive, they were confessing candidly that they had been taking advantage. They were moderating their impatience and their prices. They were changed their price-labels. One of them had made a striking statement: “If I were not honest by nature, I would be out of self-interest.”

  How true that was. And Noblemain was astonished that all the fairy tales, all the naively rose-tinted literary works that exalted virtue had only praised it for it
s own sake. They had not built their morality on a terrestrial platform; they had left it floating in mid-air. They had not dared to proclaim and demonstrate that we obtain advantages, that we have an interest, in being honest.

  Meanwhile, the garage-owner had arrived at the little door to the park. He would have liked to flee from the memory of that letter, addressed to Madame Arnage, that he had recently slipped into the letter-box. What a shadow over that radiant day...

  He did not know the results of his villainy, and feared their discovery. He would have liked to recoil momentarily from a visit that was nevertheless unavoidable, for Pierre Arnage was designated as the president of his committee.

  Just as he opened the door, an automobile stopped behind him. Arnage got out briskly. He took the garage-owner’s arm.

  “Are you coming to see me, Noblemain?”

  He seemed full of energy, his forehead and gaze cheerful. Noblemain breathed out, relieved. His infamous piece of paper must not have provoked any drama. He began to explain his project.

  Pierre Arnage cut him off, casually and cordially. “For François Thibault, anything you wish. Except that I’m leaving for The Hague tomorrow. I wanted to call in at Briolle, but I don’t have a moment to spare. You can explain your scheme to me in detail when I get back. You’ll excuse me, won’t you, my good friend? Until then...”

  He took the path to the château. Turning round, he waved his hand to bid farewell, and repeated, warmly: “For François Thibault, whatever you wish.”

  He was almost running, light and nimble—and Noblemain watched him draw away under the arch of foliage, like the living symbol of the delight that reigned over the town and in his own heart.

  Chapter VI

  When Jean Liseray went into the little house in Bourg-la-Reine at four o’clock he found that there was no one there. But his mother could not be far away, for her embroidery seemed to be waiting for her, simply set down on a table nearly the window in her room. Her sewing-box was still open. Jean recognized, in the pell-mell of pincushions of every color the favorite playthings of his early childhood: the wooden egg that was inserted into stockings in order to repair them; the sculpted cases that contained needles; the three pairs of scissors tucked into a leather sheath; the metal thimble that retained the warmth of a finger for such a long time...

  That morning, he had seen the editor of the Bonjour, the paper that published his reportage—a momentous occasion, for he was one of those modern Mikados so absorbed by their immense business affairs that they have to time to see anyone, that they are practically invisible. In reality, he spent entire afternoons playing backgammon with his mistress, a cinema starlet. O miracle! This morning, the Mikado was humanized. His subjects had been able to contemplate him face to face. He had given Jean Liseray not merely time, but also praise, and those were two commodities with which he was equally miserly. He had congratulated him on his recent reportage, in terms so just and warm that Jeans had felt his heart melt.

  On going into the editorial office, he had been firmly determined to abandon his profession as a globe-trotter. In particular, he did not want to be too far away from Marilène. But the boss had asked him to leave for The Hague, in order to describe the great assizes in which the fate of the world would be settled. Still swooning under the delightful weight of eulogies, he had not had the strength to resist.

  Except that, before leaving, he wanted to plead Marilène’s case once again to his mother, to bring the two women together. He refused to let the previous day’s curt and painful conversation be the end of the matter. He must have gone about it the wrong way. He would do better today. He had a joyful presentiment in his heart. And as he was to see Marilène again later that afternoon, he retained the hope of announcing the success of his mission to her.

  Madame Liseray came back in. More animated than usual, a little color in her cheeks, she told him that she had just obtained the latest news from the neighbors’ radio. It was excellent. A genuine volte-face had been produced since the day before. Everyone seemed inclined in advance to accept the verdict of The Hague.

  And Jean understood that she was primarily fearful for him. She had been afraid that her grown-up son would be taken from her. But she had always hidden from him that she went to the neighbors for news like that. Undoubtedly, she had only confessed it to him because she had been taken by surprise, on finding him in her room, leaning over her sewing-kit. Oh, that prudery of tenderness……

  Sitting down at the window, she resumed her embroidery. The work was mounted on a square of green waxed canvas. Every time she tugged the needle, there was a little dry click. Jean sat down beside her, on a low chair.

  “I’m confident too,” he told her. “Everyone’s beginning to take account of the stupidity of war. Arbitration will save us from it. But after all, if it fails, there’ll be general mobilization. I’ll be caught up in it as soon as I get back.”

  “It’s not possible!” she said, sharply. “It’s not possible.”

  “It is, in fact, improbable—but in any case, I’d leave for The Hague more tranquil if you were to promise me to be kind to Marilène, if I were sure that she could, if necessary, take refuge with you. Yes, I’ve come back to that. I have the impression that we lost control yesterday, that we ran into the buffers...”

  In a pensive and affectionate tone, she said: “That’s true...”

  She stopped working. The little dry click of the needle on the waxed cloth was no longer audible.

  “Let’s not argue,” he went on, “as to whether I’m right or wrong to marry a young woman in Marilène’s situation. For fifty years, heaps of plays and novels have stirred up the question without resolving it. Besides which, no one has ever convinced anyone. And I don’t have any intention of trying you make to abandon your ideas. No, no. What I’m asking, Maman, is for you to set your ideas aside, to by-pass them, for me, in order to permit me to leave reassured. Something tells me that you’d like that.”

  Without bitterness, with a kind of resigned bonhomie, she confessed: “It’s true that I have old-fashioned ideas—but what do you expect? One has the ideas of one’s era. One has old ideas, just as one has old cheeks. One can’t do much about it. You have to put yourself in my place, to think about everything that troubles me, everything that disconcerts me, about your decision. You mustn’t hold it against me.”

  “Hold it against you! Oh, Maman...”

  “But that doesn’t prevent me, you know, from sensing how good and generous you’re being to Marilène.”

  “It’s so good to be good. And I’m rescuing her. And then again, I love her...”

  “And you also know that I’d do anything to make you happy, that I’d do anything not to lose you...”

  “Then…you’ll be good to her too…spare her, take her in, if I have to go away…in sum, adopt her?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Oh! Thank you, Maman.”

  Getting up, he threw his arms around her neck. Ordinarily, a kind of timidity, restrained his gestures; he only gave his mother awkward and furtive kisses. Then he sat down again close to her, at her feet. He marveled at the fact that, by virtue of a sudden metamorphosis, she had found in her tenderness the strength to stifle her prejudices. How he had misjudged her…

  He no longer had anything but gratitude and contrition. “If you knew, Maman, how much pleasure you’re giving me…and I’ve so often caused you pain. Oh, I’ve kept count. I held it against myself. Only, I didn’t tell you. Look, that birthday, when you had asked me to come to dinner…I’d promised…and you waited for me, alone, at the table…I’d forgotten... And again, last year, didn’t I reproach you, stupidly, for having deprived me of comradeship, of scholarly discipline, because you had the admirable patience to educate me yourself in order to keep me out of school until I was twelve? And so many others, so many other intolerable memories. When they came back to me, when they stabbed my conscience, during my travels, I tried to get rid of them. I couldn’t. Then I wo
uld have liked to escape from myself, as one jumps out of an airplane...”

  “My little Jean...”

  “Oh, everything that one keeps within oneself…and what’s atrocious, absurd about it is that, while sometimes showing myself so hard and so secretive, I felt sorry for you. I know how sad your life had become, in this house that you knew when it was animated, alive, where you had been happy, and where you had to remain alone, always alone. And I wasn’t just compassionate, I was grateful—but I still kept quiet. I know how much I’ve cost you, since you brought me into the world, the anxiety, the insomnia, and time, and money. Oh, it’s true—I hadn’t asked to be born; that’s not important. I know that a child gives more pain than pleasure, that it represents a complete and harsh sacrifice. Yes, I’ve thought all that, but I never told you. If you knew how happy I am to feel liberated, to be able to speak. Maman, I beg your pardon for everything...”

  “My big…but I too, couldn’t speak. And yet, I had so many things to say to you, every time I saw you again. Oh, it’s just, you see, that I was a little afraid of you...”

  “Of me?”

  “Yes. It’s funny, isn’t it? I made you, carried you, nursed you, taught you the A B C of everything—and yet you scare me slightly. In your presence, I become anxious, I lose my head.”

  “Maman! But that’s impossible.”

  “But yes, yes—and then, as if I had a gag in my mouth, I keep quiet, I choke. Or worse, I say exactly what I shouldn’t. I feel it coming; I try to stop it; I can’t. It comes out. And there you are, offended, discontented. And me, so sorry...”

  “But now it’s all explained, it won’t happen anymore.”

  “Yes, it’s finished, isn’t it? And since we’re confessing, I might as well tell you that I haven’t always handled you very cleverly. Oh, I know. For example, in my letters, I complain about the length of your absences. When you come back, I complain that you don’t come to see me often enough. I was wrong. You did what you could. It must have irritated you. But I didn’t know, since I didn’t know you until today; I often imagined that you didn’t love me...”