by Paul Morand
“With pleasure… and then?”
“Well, afterwards… I met Hedwige, daughter of the slow-paced Boisrosé family, and she taught me to love slowness. There can be no question that speed is a dead end: the ambassadors who used carriages brought peace with them, while ministers who travel by air bring war. Just go to the cinema and watch an accident in slow motion, as God might have arranged it: it’s just a succession of caresses; the plane skims the ground; the ground smashes the aircraft to pieces with more delicacy than the gourmet peels his fig, and the flames that are about to send the passengers up in smoke resemble a fire that has not been lit properly. It is speed, which by bringing two people intimately closer together, produces the deadly shock… All this, my good friend, has made me reflect and it has occurred to me that by rushing about too quickly I could be well on the way to affecting my feelings for my wife and my most precious concerns might become like hard corks.”
Thoughtful all of a sudden, Pierre looked at Hedwige.
“One question, Regencrantz…” he said briskly.
“I’m listening.”
Pierre reconsidered:
“No. Pretend I said nothing.”
They moved to the café. Pierre took the doctor to one side. And very hurriedly, in a low voice:
“This is what I wanted to ask you: Hedwige will have her baby in October. Just imagine that, not till October! I feel as though I could never wait that long. Isn’t there a way…”
“What way? What do you mean?” asked Regencrantz stiffly. “Nature moves at her own pace. Be like her.”
“Ah!” said Pierre, disappointed, as he turned his head towards Hedwige to make sure she wasn’t listening. “Forgive my ignorance, doctor, I wanted so much to save time… I’m longing to know what sex it is… The fortune tellers always get it wrong. Might there not be some scientific procedure…”
“At four months, some Americans dye the mother’s cells and those of the child at the same time, and as a result, know its sex.”
“That’s wonderful! In less than two months, I could know!”
“Yes, but I have to tell you that it’s not recommended at all. In Europe, you won’t find any doctor who is prepared to do it. You’ll have to make do with fortune tellers.”
“Too bad,” Pierre sighed, resigned to the fact. “I’ll do as I always do, I’ll wait.”
*
Pierre went downstairs with Regencrantz, having offered to drop him by car in the centre of town if, in exchange, he would agree to accompany him beforehand for a brief walk in the Bois de Boulogne.
“Let’s go quickly, doctor, quickly, what they call presto.”
“Quickly, Monsieur Niox? I thought you were cured?”
“Basically, you’re right,” Pierre replied, laughing. “Why quickly? My meeting is not until four o’clock.”
Which did not prevent them from setting off at full tilt down to the Bois.
“Looking at these police lights, flashing red and green alternately,” Regencrantz continued, carrying on with his theme and hanging onto the door handle, “you will observe that we do not advance at a regular pace, but rather in a series of leaps interrupted by stops. This is how nature and genius behave.”
“Let’s get out and walk now,” said Pierre, interrupting him.
The doctor did his best to follow; he ran after him with very short steps, on his heels, taking care not to slip, as though on ice. After a quarter of an hour he could go no farther and spoke in a panting voice:
“One day… I met… a man… the fastest in the world, a famous record-holder…”
“Commodore Swift, perhaps?” asked Pierre respectfully.
“The very man.
“You must hear this anecdote. It’s made for you even in its moral aspect. But let’s stop here, please. I am, as you say, exhausted.”
Struggling for breath, Regencrantz collapsed onto a bench.
“Give me time to tell you my story…”
“I’m listening to you patiently,” said Pierre.
“I had discovered during a trip to the United States that Commodore Swift happened to be at a country club to the north of Salt Lake and it struck me as a unique opportunity to encounter the record-holder. Some friends arranged it all for me. Shortly beforehand, Swift had reached a speed of eight hundred and eighty-two kilometres per hour, that’s two hundred and forty-five metres per second. He had not only brought the earth closer to the air and the car to the aeroplane, and to sound, and to light, and to all the ethereal things that are transmitted and propelled with greater freedom, but he had also gained sovereign rights over all sportsmen and also over all those men in a hurry in the world who, like you, Monsieur Pierre Niox, should recognize him as king.”
“Speed like that, it’s the infinite,” sighed Pierre admiringly.
“Whereas I find that a number, no matter which one, even a record-breaking number, restricts and stifles the infinite,” replied the doctor. “When I walked into the lounge of the country club, it appeared to me to be empty. One man, just one, was there, slumped in an armchair. His legs were stretched out on the table and you could see the thick soles of his shoes, his arms hung down, his eyes were half closed, and he stared at me without blinking; he looked like a piece of furniture or, rather, a building, so rooted to the spot did he seem. Outside, through the thick bay windows of the monastic room, I noticed the beach, extending over a glassy surface which it prolonged, differing from it only in its paler shade of colour. Low, grey clouds sped by.
“At this hour of the morning, in America, everybody has left for work. Men and women were bustling about, people were running to their place of employment, the suburban trains were hurtling over the points bringing businessmen to more business meetings. I was shocked to see this man, on his own, lying motionless in an armchair in the empty lounge of a club.
‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ I ventured.
‘You’re actually early.’
‘Are you sure that I shouldn’t have waited and that the commodore will still be able to see me?’
‘Doctor Regencrantz,’ he said, ‘the commodore has nothing to do. I am the commodore.’
He held out the empty palms of his enormous hands, useless machine tools. He also pointed to his inactive feet, hanging in the air as though on pedals.
‘Lousy climate, it really is,’ he sighed.
I looked at him in astonishment, so amazed that I could not utter a word.
‘Does it surprise you that I should have nothing to do? All winter, I’ve been tuning up Fireflash. In the wind-tunnel workshop I had to alter the rear compression tanks which were producing too much resistance, reduce the heavy tubing of the radiator, because Fireflash was nose-diving, then rebuild it in light metal because the water was boiling too quickly. The car’s ready now and all I can do is wait.’
‘And what are you waiting for, commodore?’ I asked with interest.
‘A favourable day, and during that day, a propitious hour, and during that hour, the few necessary seconds.’
‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘Is it possible that since the winter…’
‘That’s right. What do you expect, adverse winds were blowing up until April; in May the ground became clayey; at the beginning of July the first tornadoes arrived. In short, I’ve been waiting for the right moment for four months, for one hundred and seventeen days exactly,’ he groaned angrily.
I risked a joke:
‘Is there a great deal of slack season in a racing driver’s job?’ I said.
‘Yes. I can say that for eight months I haven’t progressed an inch.’
Commodore Swift crossed his legs wearily; he sucked at his tobacco-less pipe. He sighed and looked around him like a paralysed man waiting for the nurse to come by so that he could have his vegetable broth. His innocent face, covered with patches of red, turned towards me, imploring, gentle and without hope. He stood up slowly, somewhat unsure of his movements, his muscles limp, his centre of gravity unsteady, uncertain in his
gait and in the future of all progress on foot.
‘We can always go to the garage,’ he said to me, ‘that will keep us busy for a while. You’ll see Fireflash. Fireflash has been around a long time, but she’s a beautiful piece of machinery all the same.’
Once the car had been found and the tarpaulin removed, I caught sight of a mass of crimson-red curved sheet metal which, due to it having been designed for speed, no longer had any shape. The eye slipped over her like the wind. She was not slender like the petrel or spindly like a torpedo; from a forty-five-degree angle, she resembled a plate, in profile a pear, and from the front a large soup tureen. She lay heavily on the sand, plump, pot-bellied and dormant.
‘What!’ I thought, ‘Can this be the machine that the fastest things have difficulty grasping hold of and whose striated, elongated and egg-shaped image is transmitted to us by belinograph all over the globe?’
The commodore started her up and, through a narrow neck, slid down into the single seat. It was as if the flesh of a lobster were returning with difficulty into the shell of the claw. He pumped the throttle, switched on the ignition, released the compressed air and obtained a few splutters.
‘Is this for a test run?’ I asked, delighted already.
‘I’d be surprised. What’s the wind speed this morning?’
‘Thirty-two metres per second,’ replied an assistant.
‘What did we have yesterday? At the same time?’
‘Twenty-seven metres per second.’
‘Above eighteen metres per second, there’s no point in attempting anything,’ the commodore sighed resignedly. ‘I’m not starting up just to amuse you, doctor.’
The American’s head disappeared into the sheet metal and his voice was drowned out by the thunder of quadruple exhaust pipes. The mechanics were bustling about already, but with a motion of his hand he indicated to them not to move. Installed like a worm inside his pear, the record-breaker sat motionless in the midst of his 600 horsepower, his machine that was unable to take off, the sixty-four cylinders that strove to no purpose, his sixteen carburettors which, through the static, exuded petrol that at any moment could be transformed into energy.”
“It’s fascinating,” Pierre broke in. “And then?”
“That was all,” Regencrantz continued. “The commodore switched off the ignition and remained there, absolutely unwilling to move, sitting there solemnly, affected in turn by the lethargy that Fireflash seemed to have communicated to him; an eternal silence fell over the salty beach.
“The powder must be wet, that’s why Fireflash hasn’t set off,” I thought. “Speed must be a strange sort of fairy for everything to be sacrificed because of it, even time! Here is a great man who, in one hundred and seventeen consecutive days, has not managed to travel one mile. He’s really a saint, a patient hero, a victim of slowness. The commodore deserves fame, but not of the kind he’s searching for. It would be better for him to be famous under another name: that of the man who spent four and a half months travelling one thousand six hundred and nine metres.”
“And what about you?” said Pierre, “how many hours have you spent learning this edifying apologia by heart?”
CHAPTER XIX
EVER SINCE HEDWIGE’S pregnancy had prevented him from playing tennis, Pierre had replaced that sport with swimming and every morning he would go to the pool, where he met Vincent Amyot. These meetings, accidental initially, had become daily encounters and the two brothers-in-law became friends; they got changed together; that is to say that normally, while Amyot was unknotting his tie, Pierre was already putting on his swimming costume. But that morning, instead of rushing to plunge into the water, Pierre was lounging about in the sunshine with his towel round his neck, his back to the cabins.
Amyot was gazing at him.
“You’ve got thinner,” he said.
“Unlike you,” said Pierre. “That’s the belly of a happy man!”
“Does that mean that you’re not a happy man?”
Amyot lit a cigarette and sat on the ground; to his surprise, Pierre did likewise.
“Me, unhappy!” he said. “Don’t you realize what Hedwige means to me…”
He stopped talking and stared at the murky bottom of the pool, streaked with three black lines intended for racing.
“Explain yourself,” said Amyot.
“Well… to begin with, I’m only warm when I’m with her. Yes, I don’t know why, but spring hasn’t started for me this year. The thermometer shows over fifteen degrees and I’m living at zero…”
“It’s the breeze caused by your speed,” Vincent interrupted mockingly.
“…the mere presence of Hedwige gives me a warm rush. Her skin is smooth and fiery, she emits a sleek radiance like the glaze of a fine stove. Without being bubbly, she enlivens everything; she hasn’t the vulgar incandescence of effusive women, she doesn’t parch you; she radiates the true warmth of life, that of the woman, that of the breast, that of the heart. In her presence, it’s always summer.”
“You’re grateful to her for giving you a child,” said Amyot enviously.
“No, that’s not why I find her so good and so beautiful. For she’s still just as beautiful at the end of her third month; Plato says that beauty is a short-lived tyranny; with Hedwige it’s a long-lasting empire; yes, Hedwige is enduring and perfect like my most treasured belongings. She is a living High Renaissance piece, a constantly rekindled, always satisfying requirement for my eyes. Oh no! Mother Boisrosé didn’t cheat on quality!”
“Do you get on well with the mother-in-law?” asked Amyot.
“Oh yes,” said Pierre hastily, “she’s a decent woman.”
“Ah, do you think so!” said Amyot, starting to laugh. “Forgive me, but the epithet is funny.”
“Wasn’t she kind to you?”
“My dear Pierre… she has been perfectly kind, naturally; it’s just that with perfect kindness she took away my wife!”
He sighed and nodded, the still fine features of his appearance creasing into the folds of his double chin and, confronted with Pierre’s questioning gaze, he continued:
“In the beginning, I tried to keep Angélique for myself—not for me alone, of course, I wouldn’t have been able to do that—but at least share her fifty-fifty. For a year and a half I acted methodically, as befits a meticulous Polytechnique graduate. And then, I grew weary. Angélique leaves at nine o’clock in the morning and comes back at eight in the evening (on the evening she doesn’t have dinner at Saint-Germain, that is). And she sleeps there at least twice a week.”
“Hedwige very seldom goes there,” said Pierre, “I forbid her to drive in her condition.”
“I should be extremely surprised,” said Vincent, “if Madame de Boisrosé could survive a single day without seeing one of her daughters. First of all, the Rule decrees it so. You think that you have contracted a marriage; you have contracted a disease, the Boisrosé disease: for your wife this means communal life, a siesta until six in the evening, the dormitory; for you, being led by the nose and presented submissively to Bonne, while waiting for her to grab you by your protruding snout.”
Pierre, who was accustomed to being direct, suddenly turned towards Vincent:
“Is she hot-blooded, your wife?”
“She is. Only it’s not focused on men. She only opens her arms to Mamicha, she only embraces her sisters, she has Saint-Germain in her blood, she stops being unfeeling there even with Uncle Rocheflamme, and I really do think that she won’t ever know any real pleasure until she’s in the Boisrosé family grave, because, in her will, she has refused to be buried with me. When it’s a matter of climbing into the maternal bed, there’s no problem! I wish you could see her hurling off her clothes. And her impassioned messages about putting an end to her solitude, the way she glances at the door of my house, at that lovely door that will allow her to rush off ‘home’ at last! And her weariness as soon as she returns! And her eagerness as soon as she sets off there again! Not to mention t
he hours that she evades me. Everything she loses in insomnia and weight when she is with me, she puts on again with siestas and kilos the moment she’s gone back to her family…”
He sighed once more.
“Angélique is an accomplished lover, I’m sure of that,” he continued. “She has extravagant desires that are like rages, and a prodigious lust; she can love until she draws blood, but the blood is that which she has in her veins.”
Pierre stood up suddenly, knotted the cord of his swimming trunks and paced up and down.
“I suggest we found a club,” he said, “an association comprising all present and future men married to Boisrosé girls. We have to stand together, for heaven’s sake! We have to pit a rule against the Rule. Each of these girls is incomparable individually; they are also very beautiful all together, but I loathe having to think of them collectively. When I think of Hedwige, it makes me attribute a series of attractive qualities to the others that I had thought were particular to my wife and which, I am bound to acknowledge, don’t really belong to her. It’s very unpleasant! It’s already bad enough marrying someone who looks like her mother; it’s like living with a memento mori, with the ivory death’s head on the table, among the festive roses.”
