by Paul Morand
“Very seriously: the wind, or, if you prefer, my creative energy. As a child, I was taught to jump. ‘Use your creative energy!’ my father would cry. ‘Where is my creative energy?’ That produced laughter and I felt ashamed; ever since, I’ve known that my creative energy was within me, in me alone, and that it was a marvellous potential source of power, always available to me, which grown-ups had probably forgotten how to use since they never seemed to run or jump. As I grew older, I could feel this expendable force beneath my feet; other people expend it in goodness, in the will-to-power, in concentration, in spiteful behaviour or in foul language. I expend it in speed. I am a man of prompt expedition, as your Madame de Sévigné would say. In a word, a precursor: ‘I run ahead’, it’s etymology.”
“Would you be really annoyed if the world went at your speed and caught up with you?”
“No danger of that. Whenever that happens, I’ll have been long dead.”
“And have returned to nothingness?”
“Who knows? There may be a reward up there for those who have spent long enough in Gehenna waiting for others, a paradise where buses and women arrive on time, and speeches take up ten words, where causes and effects go hand in hand, where the alpha collides with the omega and where God—”
“God is above Time,” said Placide, out of his depth.
“Not at all! God is Time. If he’s invisible to us, it’s because he moves too quickly. To be able to see him, one would have to move as quickly as he does: that’s what Eternity is. The other day, a train was pulling out; ‘Ah,’ cried the child sitting nearby, ‘look, the trees are walking!’ So with the other life: it will be the turn of stationary things to start walking.”
“Watch the bend!” yelled Placide. “Your door’s about to open, for heaven’s sake! Your speedometer’s marking one hundred and sixty! And you don’t drive as well as you think you do.”
“Quickly and badly, that’s my motto!”
“An epitaph more likely.”
“Epitaphs are the mottos of the dead.”
At that moment, after a surge of speed, Pierre was negotiating a bend. The beam of the car’s headlights lit up a square shape that was not moving and badly parked. It was a large truck without rear lights that had pulled up on the road. Pierre slammed on his brakes from a distance of thirty metres.
Suddenly they had all the time in the world, more than a fifth of a second, to contemplate the twin tyres that loomed up, to take a careful look at the jack perched under the axle of the broken-down truck and the thick plank beneath it, as well as the faulty tail light and the number of the police car covered in dust that they were about to crash into, all presided over by a tarpaulin the colour of a bat. They took the time to read each letter of the name of the transport company, to consider almost nonchalantly each blade of grass and the enormous spare wheel by the side of the road, and the merest insect on this warm night made Amazonian by the proximity of the Rhône; they saw their lives flash by, were able to think about their future, about the gendarmes who would soon arrive with a box of bandages that lacked the required medicaments, about the curious bystanders, about the very haughty neighbours.
With a bold swing of the steering wheel, however, Pierre managed to avoid the worst, the local ambulance, the hospital bed and the temporary burial chamber at Saint-Vallier cemetery. Due to his quick reflexes, they were let off with a brand-new wing that still smelt of the workshop and cellulose paint. But, this battered wing being one of those improvements of current automobile construction that wrapped itself round the headlight, the light immediately went out, followed by the other one.
The night was resplendent, very dark and close-textured; the stars shone, you could hear the wide Rhône flowing over its cool bed and you could sense it between the tall poplars and the mooring stakes.
“And here we are,” muttered Placide, quivering and trying to be composed.
“What a fine river!” said Pierre. “At last some water that moves quickly!”
“We had a lucky escape. The scoundrel who was driving that large truck must have been off drinking or asleep!” said Placide indignantly. “That’s a bad deed that deserves a proper whipping.”
“Come now, control yourself, Monsieur de Grignan!”2
“And where is there a garage open at this time?”
“You’re sure to find one tomorrow morning.”
“But until then?”
“Settle yourself into what’s left of the car. Take my overcoat.”
“And you? Where are you going?”
“To Paris,” Pierre said simply. “You wouldn’t want me to wait, would you?”
And he set off into the night, walking in the middle of the road, at a rapid pace, dragging deeply on his chewed-up cigar.
CHAPTER V
IT IS MIDDAY. Madame de Boisrosé, naturally, is in bed, for she scarcely ever rises from this bed; she is unable to sleep in it and even though she is drowsy and constantly tired, she spends night and day trying to sleep. Nothing is more exhausting than being unable to sleep; there is a horizontal weariness that active people will never experience.
The sun skims the imitation Louis XVI bedroom furniture and flows into the tepid atmosphere; the damp logs sparkle in the stove, mingling humidity with the heat, causing a season of Caribbean rain to pervade this Saint-Germain apartment.
The Boisrosé family, who have lived there since the separation decree that had caused Monsieur de Boisrosé to retreat to his refuge at the Mas Vieux, leaving the three daughters to their mother, are holding a daylight wake in honour of the deceased. On hearing of his death, the four women, who had not set eyes on the old hermit for nine years, discovered an immense love for him. Separation, jealousy, quarrels and resentment do not preclude love, a reptilian fondness that bites its own tail and feeds happily from its opposite end. What the Boisrosé ladies enjoyed most about this bereavement was the nervous shock and the tearful stimulation aroused by the unexpected event, the notion of sorrow fomenting grief itself, or rather a magical elation similar to the outbursts at Negro funerals, all culminating in a French apotheosis of family-mindedness. During his bitch of a life, Monsieur de Boisrosé had let out numerous sighs; only the last of these was heard.
“Poor Papa died all on his own,” sobbed Fromentine.
“Without having seen the old colony again, or the Trou Dauphin,” said Hedwige.
“Without a bit of warm earth for his final resting place.”
“He would have preferred the sailors’ cemetery or even the Negro one to a grave in France!”
“He died of grief; I, too, will die of grief; one never dies of anything else,” said Madame de Boisrosé.
Lying across her mother’s bed, Fromentine was allowing her mascara to run like watery pitch down her lacklustre cheeks. Her red hair blazed. Sitting on the floor, dark-haired Hedwige, her back to the base of the bed, looked like a funerary allegory, while Angélique, her blonde head buried against Madame de Boisrosé’s cheek, made up the final panel of this three-coloured, domestic carrying of the Cross. Nothing could stem the tears of these four women, who rake up old memories and end up crying over themselves—that bottomless urn—nothing, that is, unless it be the smooth expanse of their Creole nonchalance in which everything they feel or undertake gets buried in the sand.
Once they had all wept and sobbed a great deal, once the emotion of the morning had subsided—something that was regularly provoked by the arrival of Angélique, who lived in Paris, who had not been able to cry at home during the night, and who rushed off to her own family as soon as her husband had left for the office—once this daily memorial service had lasted long enough—and it had been going on for three weeks—they realized that midday had struck and that it was high time to prepare lunch, which today happened to be peppers with sweetcorn.
While Angélique was laying the table and Fromentine was greasing the frying pan, Madame de Boisrosé whetted her appetite by polishing off a box of chocolates. She was a woman of f
orty-eight who, on days when she washed and daubed herself with white, managed to look only sixty, for among Creoles nature works twice as hard. Madame de Boisrosé ruled over her three daughters in the manner of the Sun King. The three Boisrosé girls would be famous for their beauty had they ever encountered other people, but they knew no one. They lived in Saint-Germain, a town that is nonetheless connected to Paris by ninety trains each day, as though they were living in a field of sugar cane. No news penetrated there, they received no communications from either the outside world or the present day; they bloomed amid an inaccessible and inflated collective happiness. The eldest daughter (twenty-four years old), the only married one, is called Angélique; the middle one (twenty), Hedwige; the youngest (eighteen), Fromentine.
Not daring to call their mother Mummy, they have given her the nickname of Mamicha. Just as primitive religions avoid giving their god a name out of extreme respect. Bonne de Boisrosé is certainly the object of such basic idolatry. For her daughters she is the water goddess, the cow goddess, the tree goddess. And just as a tree in autumn towers over ground that is strewn with its fruits, Bonne, sitting on a pile of cushions, watches her daughters daily as they sprawl at her feet, on her bed, adoring her; and serving her according to a certain number of rituals applied regularly and at random in life which they sometimes refer to with an anxious smile as the Rule.
The Rule assigns all household duties to Angélique. To her belongs the household washing, the ironing, the sewing machine, the kitchen; no one sautées or braises except under her direction; it is she who deals with the daily woman; from her generous hands flows the bleach; the food and the drink are her responsibility; she alone has the keys of the cupboards, the recipes for gherkins and the authority to decide whether a sauce shall be spicy or vinaigrette. But, like a chatelaine who permits servitude, she relinquishes the desserts to Fromentine. Her authority ceases with rum babas, madeleines, brioches and macaroons. Angélique looks after the tinned food. Angélique sometimes looks after her husband too, but having exhausted her domestic energy at Saint-Germain, she is so indolent and lethargic with him that he knows her only as an odalisque.
Hedwige, for her part, tries her hand at household accounting from the moment she jumps out of bed. She has scissors for the rent coupons and also for cutting out patterns for the family’s dresses. She occasionally settles one out of every ten bills. The gas and electricity meters impart their secret tariffs to her. She sorts out the Boisrosé library, which even contains some books; she changes the needles on the gramophone. She also answers letters because hers is the most legible handwriting. Hedwige buys the lottery tickets. From her height of five foot seven, she discusses tax affairs with the inspector, who is only five foot tall.
The Rule requires that Fromentine, on behalf of the Boisrosés, should maintain contact with nature, sporting activities, flowers, fruits, bouquets and secateurs. No doubt because she is the least natural of all of them. She is the one who puts seeds in the pipit’s cage, the little warbler from the tropics that chirps at the tiniest ray of sunshine. Every Thursday morning, she sets off for Paris and alights at that exotic aviary that is Hédiard’s and, like the conquistadors in Seville, she brings back palm oil, potatoes and groceries. As soon as she is informed about a delivery of mangoes (mangoes from Guinea in summer and mangoes from Venezuela in winter), she buys bags of them. In this way, she serves the community while simultaneously gratifying the never-satisfied family appetite for expenditure (an appetite that is assuaged equally well with centimes as it is with banknotes) for a couple of days.
Young and beautiful, these three girls worked hard and never stopped blessing their mother for having brought them up without cares, without religion and with barely a thought of a dowry. But if one of them had a problem or felt upset, it was enough for her to set foot in Mamicha’s bedroom to find peace and feel well again. Like a miraculous idol, Mamicha accepted everything and gave nothing away, but she was able to cure. She took upon herself the responsibility for anything to do with medicaments; and also with justice; she dismissed all appeals as squabbles, for the sake of general well-being.
Cleopatra dropped a pearl into vinegar, poured the vinegar into a vessel, and drank from it. The Boisrosés fit into this brief legend: Fromentine, the youngest and most beautiful, is Cleopatra; Hedwige, the most brilliant and sensitive, is the pearl; Angélique, the most caustic, the most fermentative, the vinegar. And what part does Bonne de Boisrosé play if not the vessel?
Bonne de Boisrosé was neither good, nor loving, nor intelligent; she was neither kind nor energetic, quite the contrary, and yet her three daughters, so different from one another, would have willingly agreed never to marry, or to die in torment, if it brought their poor mother comfort and happiness. Beneath the convenient label of filial love, she had inculcated in them a whole host of taboos and impulses that were as irresistible as the laws of gravity. No one had ever observed in Bonne that joyful self-effacement that most mothers display as their children grow in strength and beauty. The more her daughters progressed, the more assured the Mamicha-like demands and her domineering, radiant and foolish personality became. For there is a fragile power to old age, a stubbornly brilliant ineffectiveness, a frail domestic blackmail that novelists and historians, those Siamese twins of our age, must take into account.
This plump, bedridden dwarf had given birth to these three girls, the shortest of whom was five foot seven tall. When they were all together, one was reminded of the Sibyls in the Sistine Chapel: everything was there, the proportions, the bones, the way they carried their heads. They could not handle a broom or a saucepan without looking as though they were holding cornucopias or sceptres. It wasn’t a hat that they should have worn on their heads, but a circus tent. Fashion did not trouble them for they were in vogue at every level. For such women, no men exist these days, and particularly not in France. The Boisrosé girls had no success because in our country popularity wears size thirty-six clothes and size six gloves, because success, like harnessed lightning, is a very delicate thing. Failure awaited them; they were unfortunate in their size, because what is very large either gets damaged or lost, be it the Nile among the desert sands or Jean Mermoz3 in the ocean. The Boisrosés were like those vast Aubusson tapestries, those gigantic seventeenth-century chests that used to be sold at auction extremely cheaply because no one had a lorry driver to transport them nor an apartment in which to keep them. Comparable to allegories, these human creatures were simple and indecisive, very different from those allegories that possess neither simplicity nor mystery and have their names inscribed at the bottom of their dresses. From the Sibyls, they borrowed a vague and sombre aspect; they were the gaudy ornaments of a temple invisible to the non-initiated, the temple of the Mother. They were female Knights Templar, the Porte-Glaive sisters of the uterine order.
“Hurry up, children,” called Bonne; “Madame de La Chaufournerie is due at two o’clock to pay her respects to me on the death of your father and we still have to have lunch and tidy up. Hedwige, my pink dressing gown.”
“You’re not going to get up, Mamicha?”
“What, with my hacking cough and my wretched mortgage, debilitated and thrown into confusion by this news! It’s catastrophic! It’s crucifying! One of these days, I’m going to pass away!”
“Mamicha,” wept Fromentine, “how can you frighten us like this? You, die! But then we’d all die.”
“I’m in a bad way; I’ve got such a raging temperature you’d have thought a spider crab had bitten me! And I have to think of everything, get everything ready, take stock of our situation; do the balance sheet!” (Bonne loved words that she did not understand). “The Anse sugar refinery in Mustique is in a mess and the indigo factory has collapsed. Where are we going to get any money? My brain goes to pieces as far as figures are concerned. And to cap it all, here’s your father selling the Mas Vieux and dying immediately afterwards.”
“Very well,” exclaimed Fromentine, her eyes gleaming, “th
at’s where there’s some money!”
“What a scatterbrain you are, girl! You never listen to serious conversations, your head’s upside down. Haven’t we said over and over again that this money was never discovered? Hedwige, get the cards quickly! A pack of fifty-two; I’m going to see what they have to tell me… and also an aspirin, no, some paraffin in a little verveine instead. You’ll find some in the small medicine cupboard. Fromentine, get a move on!”
A spluttering sound could be heard coming closer and the platter of peppers with corn made its entrance. Angélique, sweating from the kitchen fumes, a cotton scarf around her head, a magnificent enchantress, was holding the pan, the handle of which she had wrapped in a lace handkerchief so as not to burn her fingers; Fromentine, like a choirboy, was carrying the can of oil, the palm oil that was an essential ingredient of the Boisrosés’ diet.
Once lunch was over, Madame de Boisrosé, her pack of cards in her hand, started weeping again while playing “Napoleon’s Tomb” at the same time.
“My adorable little Mamicha,” said Hedwige, cosseting her, “don’t cry any more, we’ll take care of all your worries.”
“I’m mourning your poor Papa who loved us so; his last thought was for us, you can be sure of that. Ah, what a great heart and what a mind!”
“So where could Papa have hidden those millions of francs?” Angélique asked dreamily. “In a hole in the wall, or in a hollow olive tree?”
“He gave them to his mistress, of course,” Madame de Boisrosé wailed tartly. “To that whore who hoodwinked him. His last thought was for her, no doubt about it, and his last will too.”
“Things like that shouldn’t be allowed. What Papa did was disgraceful.”
“Don’t say that, Angélique, don’t show disrespect to your father. Hilarion was not a wicked man, but he was weak with women; they took advantage of him! One after another, the whole gang of them were there… and he didn’t even get a good meal!”
