But what an effort of frankness such a tight entente demanded…it would often be necessary to let his heart speak, finally to let his most tender impulses and his most cherished thoughts take flight. For we continue to resemble the sea, from which all life emerged, from which we emerged ourselves; in our depths repose the excellent and the worst, just as mud and pearls repose on the sea bed. Those exquisite spheres must rise up from the abyss and finally make their way into the light.
Chapter IX
Marilène and Jean Liseray, arm in arm, slowly went along the Champs-Élysées. They allowed themselves to be carried along by the great current that was heading toward the Étoile.
At the end of that day, on the eve of the assizes at The Hague, which would decide the fate of the world, everywhere, in every town and every city, people were gathering instinctively around monuments to the dead. The memory of the men who believed that they were putting an end to war was evoked. People were inspired to take inspiration from their example, to grant their supreme wish.
In Paris, it was around the tomb of the Unknown Soldier that the crowd gathered. It was meditative, but it was not sad. One sensed that its conscience was strong, proud of its unanimous desire, glad to be able to assure itself of salvation. All faces were radiating benevolence, a cordial mildness.
“I’ve seen a lot of crowds,” said Jean Liseray, “I’ve seen them in all colors, under all skies, but I’ve only ever seen one crowd analogous to this one. It was on a Sunday in spring, at the Roseraie de Bagatelle.13 I don’t know whether the beauty and the purity of the flowers inspired a sort of respect and reserve in the visitors, or whether they were slightly intoxicated by their perfume, but as they walked slowly under the flowery aches, they had the same discreet and courteous stride, the same air of serenity, of polite good humor that’s evident today. There’s benevolence in the air, and delight, and love…don’t you think so? I believe I can see the reflection of my own joy in all the faces, all the eyes. It seems to me that all these people have come here to celebrate our engagement.”
For it really was their engagement celebration. All resistance to their union had abruptly given way. As soon as they had met up that afternoon, Jean had told Marilène that he had won his mother to their cause. She would welcome the young woman with open arms, hands extended, without dwelling on the past. In her turn, Marilène told Jean that she had just received a long radiogram from her father in Geneva. He regretted having provoked his daughter’s departure by his violence and harshness. He wanted her to come back. One might have thought that in response to a signal from some mysterious voice, his eyes and his heart had opened, that he had come to understand the rigor, the narrowness and the archaism of his prejudices.
Was a breath of indulgence passing over the Earth? It seemed to be animating the crowd around Marilène and Jean. Comical spectacle could be seen on street corners. People were smiling at things that might have irritated them. People were mildly amused when a soldier, his arm as rigid as a gallows, his hand at the corner of a bulging eye, snapped a salute at an officer who returned it negligently, as if handing out alms. It was realized that the army, in recognizing inferiors and superiors, was perpetuating inequality between men, at the very moment when universal efforts were being made to reduce it. People were covertly amused by such customs, as obsolete as the chastity belts that they went to see at Cluny.
More discreet smiles greeted a cortege of automobiles coming back from some official ceremony at the Étoile: plumed bicorns, jackets embroidered with gold thread or verdure, scarlet robes, toques like cake-molds, breasts spangled with decorations like choir banners. In the crowd, women masked their hilarity by putting their fingers to their lips, in order not to offend those important individuals, who seemed pitiful and uncomfortable enough in their fancy dress.
Jean Liseray held on to his companion’s arm tightly.
“I feel so courageous, so resolute, Marilène. Is it you who’s communicating all this valor to me? You were missing, you see, like a part of myself, but we’ve come together again. Imagine the joy of an amputee who wakes up to find himself complete…how well we march in step, the two of us. How facile and simple the directive appear to me: respect human life, celebrate those who embellish or ameliorate it; realize the advantages of probity, limiting one’s happiness to that of one’s neighbor, sensing solidarity, causing the least pain, knowing by one’s own example that one is laboring a little for the future...”
They reached the Place de l’Étoile. The stone arch loomed up like an enormous pachyderm standing on its four feet in the human pond. Not far away, a man was passing by amid a murmur of surprise, compassion and mockery. He was wearing a gas mask.
At the sight of the sky that had retained the tints of dawn all day, the rumor had begun to spread that the composition of the air must have been modified. One individual, more mistrustful and more timorous than the rest, had put his mask on just in case. Behind the glass goggles, anxiety and fear could be read in his eyes. Two large annealed tubes rose up from his snout, connected to a reservoir strapped over his stomach. One might have thought that he had brought his esophagus and trachea out into the light, and was wandering through the crowd like a monstrous anatomical specimen.
That man scarcely suspected that among the two billion inhabitants of the Earth, he was the only one to have escaped the pink gas. Behind his mask, he alone was breathing the previous day’s air from his reservoir.
Astray in that crowd, whose light intoxication was bearing its members into the future, he was a man of the past.
He belonged to the age of the innumerable intermediary and stupid tipping, the age of murderous customs duties and odious passports, the age of blast furnaces and large companies.
He was a man who delighted in the clamors of the Bourse and military fanfares; a man whose ideal was to administer the work of others; a man who believed in tortuous and subterranean schemes; a man who coveted wealth as if he had a hundred stomachs and a hundred sexual organs to satisfy, when he only had precisely one; a man who did not have time to live; a man, in sum, who, limiting the universe to himself, enclosed in his hard shell, was unaware of the pleasure of mingling, of giving himself, of entering as a merry dancer into the human round-dance and feeling the warmth of other hands in his...
But a name rose up from the crowd:
“François Thibault…François Thibault...”
At home, on the screen of his wireless set, among the processions that were streaming toward the monuments to the dead in every city in the world, he had seen the people of Paris assembling around the Arc de Triomphe. He had not hesitated. “My place is there.”
Accompanied by his son Claude he had come. Mounted on the stone step that circles the foot of the edifice, he emerged. His massive torso could be distinguished, his forceful and tender features, his hair as bushy as the edge of a forest.
He raised his hand. Paris fell silent. Megaphones distributed around the plaza repeated his words.
His rapid speech was uninterrupted. Only the sympathy of the gazes that were directed at him, a meditative attention and an occasional frisson that ran through the crowd marked its approval.
“What do we want?” he said. “We want our representatives, who are ready to leave for The Hague, to know what we think, so that they can carry it there. I shall therefore express that thought—for I know that I am in communion with you. It’s simple. We want Peace. We want Peace via Arbitration. And I want to add immediately that the same appeal is rising up and reaching us from every city on Earth. We want Peace because it appears to us to be the key to all good, the normal state of being, the condition of life. We want it because we know now how wars are made.
“That peace depends on us, since it is with us that wars are made, with our lives, with all our lives...
“Oh, I know! People say to you: ‘But what if there is a people that wants war?’ Well, you reply that, in its immense majority, a people that wants war is composed of people who wan
t peace! A handful of warmongers, whose mouthpieces are unconsciously playing the game of silent manipulators, drives the inert and credulous masses to their death. It is up to us to unmask them, to denounce those forgers of war untiringly. You will be surprised by their small number. And besides, if a nation is a victim of real injustice, will it not be the first to submit its case to the Law?
“People will also say to you: ‘War is a scourge inherent in humanity.’ Well, no. Incurable war is as false as necessary suffering. It’s with such formulas that resignation is exploited. And even if it were true, even if the instinct of war were rooted in human nature, would that be a reason not to rip it out? The history of humankind is exactly that of the incessant struggle against our own defects, against the evils that assail us, against the scourges that surround us.
“No, no, let us not weaken in our resolution; and to affirm it further, let us repeat that modern warfare, between armed nations, destroys everything, resolves nothing, and unleashes in its wake endless repercussions, as painful and as stupid as itself.
“On the eve of the Arbitration, therefore, let us affirm our pacific determination, at the very foot of this edifice at celebrates the glory of military conquests. Let us not declare anathema. Let us take delight in, and be proud of, the moment when human beings, rising above themselves, finally becoming conscious of their power, have decided to live.
“Let us spare ourselves this. Let this be for us a vestige of a vanished era, a monument to the past. Let us meditate upon it as upon ruins. Let us simply think about the eight million dead that the names of the hundred victories inscribed on these walls represent. Let us think about the man whose symbolic tomb is celebrated by this arch. He believed that he was dying in order to vanquish war forever. Let us remain faithful to his ideal. Let us bring him the most beautiful palm, the olive branch. Let us swear Peace before him. Yes, let it be from this place, the star on the forehead of Paris, that it radiates over the world.”
Supported by his son’s arm, François Thibault got down from the stone step. He was eager to return to his listening-post in Bellevue, but he had to go through the crowd in order to get back to his car, and he was immediately enveloped. People rendered him thanks with stammered phrases and gazes full of affection. Some, with timid gestures, brushed his clothing with a caress. People took his hands, shook them, covered them with kisses. The certainty penetrated him of being in intimate communion with that crowd, of being its emanation, of being its soul.
And when the car finally drew away, Claude was frightened by that very fervor. What would happen tomorrow, when the exaltation had subsided, the experiment having been concluded?
But François Thibault reassured him. “Remember what I said to Pierre Contal: when people have seen what they might be, they will blush with shame at what they are.”
WINGS OF FLAME
With a brief surge, the airplane took off. Immediately recovering from her initial emotion, Claire, sitting in the narrow seat beside Lucien Chatel, savored the delights of the unfamiliar sensation. Farewell to the jolts of the road, the trepidation of the railway, the rolling and pitching of the sea, the splash of the river. Even the gliding of skates over ice seemed rude and coarse by comparison with aerial travel. Surprised and cowed by the abrupt attack of extended wings, the air became the most reliable slave, and carried the enormous machine at an even and fast speed over the innumerable routes of the sky. Infused with confidence, wellbeing and pride, Claire wanted to cry out her joy at escaping the earth.
She felt liberated. And the delight of that escape was confused within her with the certainty of escaping the odious man whose name she had been obliged to bear for five years. Even the law had rendered her the liberty that she had reconquered in fact, breaking the final link by a judgment of divorce in her favor.
Free, free—she was free! And soaring into the blue sky symbolized her freedom. It seemed to be carrying her forward in life, marching into the future.
The future…for her it was in the hands of the same man who was taking her on such a prodigious flight. She was about to forget the bad dream, recommence her life beside the dear companion of her adolescence that she had finally rediscovered. She would be his wife...
She contemplated his space-filled eyes and tenacious profile, beneath the fur-lined helmet that his portraits had rendered legendary during the past year. Every time she exclaimed her delight aloud, he lit up with a lovely smile, youthful and charming. Everything about him pleases me, she thought.
The large mahogany joystick acquired the majesty of a scepter beneath his nervous fingers. Was he not a young sovereign, recognized and acclaimed, of the realm of the air, in this triumphal chariot that he seemed to be guiding toward some apotheosis? Oh, how she loved him, how she loved him...
He rose up, describing a large spiral around the airfield. Leaning over, Claire distinguished the glazed roofs of the Chatel workshops sparkling in the sunlight, and the foliage of the Bois de Vincennes, spread out like a giant carpet of moss. They were still climbing. The tranquility increased at these heights. One could no longer hear anything but the silky purr of the propeller and, from time to time, some echo of life—an automobile horn, a firework at some country fair, the barking of a dog...
And, realizing thus the most ancient human dream, of escaping the laws of nature and the rumors of the earth, climbing in a glorious spiral toward the blue infinity, in that pure crystalline air, amid that solemn peace, the feeling that she was alone beside someone she adored, on the very day that she could promise herself to him, was for Claire an unprecedented, amazing betrothal in mid-air.
As they touched down, the crowd, breaking through the barriers, came running from all directions, surrounding them with a confused clamor, a circle of extended hands, camera lenses, open mouths and raised foreheads. And suddenly, among all those faces, Claire was only able to see one face: that of Villeret, her former husband.
She shivered. Her worst memories rose up vividly before her. Behind that neat and glossy beard, he divined the jaw of a shark, enormous, massive and full of insults. She knew how quickly that tender gaze could be imbued with hatred and charged with cruelty, how quickly the honeyed voice could be embittered.
How she had suffered before unmasking him! He had been introduced to her as a respected engineer, an administrator of important industrial enterprises—but she had gradually discovered, too late, an entire past of expedients, varying between mines at the Cape and in the Caucasus, a hundred shady enterprises in quest of the money necessary to his vices. Married, he had continued to slide down the slope until the fall: a vile story of gold mixed with sand to falsify the assay of an African deposit. That day, Claire had been obliged to use her inheritance to buy the silence of her husband’s dupes.
Undoubtedly, if Villeret had only been a poor wretch disarmed against temptation, she would have continued to help him, out of pity—but he was as brutal as he was cowardly, as jealous as he was debauched, as cruel as he was criminal, and without a trace of love to excuse his violence. The day after the scandal she had separated from him, resolved to earn her living.
She had a considerable talent for drawing. She especially liked painting birds, so she produced small pictures of that sort, which gradually found buyers. Villeret badgered her. His appearance was usually sordid, but sometimes, he was impeccable and magnificent. He pressed her to resume their life together. She could not determine the proportions in which jealousy, poverty and an obscure need for tyranny drove him to those attempts, but she refused obstinately, getting rid of him with a little money.
That ambiguous life had been going on for a year when Claire met Lucien Chatel again. They had known and loved one another in adolescence, but there could not be any question of marriage between them. Unite two children of the same age, especially when the young man has no fortune? Villeret had been preferred. But such first loves are like initials carved in the bark of young trees. Far from effacing them, the years enlarge them and hollow out t
heir traces. And when Lucien, already rich and famous before the age of thirty, found Claire alone and unhappy, they perceived that their hearts had not changed. Their life resumed where it had left off...
Since then, Chatel had pleaded with his friend incessantly to recover her liberty completely. Villeret had committed too many sins against her for him to dare to oppose it. In fact, stifling his rage, he had allowed the divorce petition to go forward without protest. For two months, she had not seen him. What did he want?
Oh, the flight in the open sky, the blue intermission, had not lasted. As soon as she touched the ground, she felt anxious again. Villeret’s eyes were fixed upon her. As soon as their gazes met, he sketched a brief signal of summons. So be it. She consented, inasmuch as she feared a conflict between the two men, who knew one another by sight. She would have a decisive conversation with Villeret. It would be the last. In sum, he was nothing to her any longer.
Anxiously, she went to the edge of the wood and took a path vaulted with foliage, where Villeret soon joined her. Immediately, she attacked.
“What do you want?”
He laughed, his voice amiable. “I wanted to congratulate you. It’s was charming, that escape à deux. The life of bees…the nuptial flight—for you’re going to marry, naturally?”
“Yes.”
Villeret stopped. His mask had fallen. Hideous with hate, his fists clenched, he cried: “Well, I don’t want that—you hear, I don’t want that!”
She shrugged her shoulders, fortified by the courage that love brings.
The Eternal Flame Page 21
