The Man in a Hurry

by Paul Morand

  The instinct that keeps the male close to his crippled female partner, however, that obliges the most fickle of animals to remain with their pregnant companions until they have given birth, drove Pierre back to Hedwige, made him stand guard beside her for entire evenings, as though summoned by an invisible force, and he would fall into a soothing slumber alongside this woman who did not sleep. But the following day, his impatience took hold of him again—his spinning like a top, his whirlwind departures, his pacing up and down the street, his sudden arrival back home making Hedwige jump, his unusual way of wandering off when he was lying beside her, interspersed with his zigzagging about and crushing insects against the window and sudden rushes to the front door.

  “I’m going out,” he would say. So, out of devotion, out of caution too, so as not to leave such an impetuous husband on his own, Hedwige declared that she was quite capable of accompanying him. She was uncomfortable, however, in the tiny convertible; and if they went on foot, she became breathless trying to keep up with Pierre, in spite of his touching attempts to slow down; he was always a hundred metres ahead, which made conversation difficult. Aware that he was wearing her out, like a horse, he did his best to seek forgiveness by uttering kind words and putting on the almost feminine smile that was his great attraction.

  “You follow me like my shadow, my sun.”

  “Anyone would think you were running away from me,” panted an exhausted Hedwige.

  And she tried hard to keep pace with Pierre, but whereas he ran, she trotted. Their rhythm was broken immediately. She was always leading with her left foot, and he with his right. He gained ground with his huge strides and would be three, and then five, chestnut trees ahead of her. She swayed in the air that he displaced; she could hear the muffled thud of his rubber heels; the breeze clung to her legs, ruffled her skirt, blew her hat off. She had to stop at the end of the pavement to let the traffic go by; he had woven his way through! He moved easily among the delivery men and scooters unloading, the children’s prams; he avoided the absent-minded man who was reading his newspaper as he walked, he steered an admirable course between the man on crutches wearing his Basque beret, the chattering nurses and the lady tugging on her constipated dog’s leash.

  Hedwige could see Pierre’s back disappearing into the distance. How well she knew that back! How familiar those striding shoulders were, those conductor’s arms! Now, he was no larger than a hare. A second later, he looked like a fleeting bacillus. Hobbling among the taxis, the buses, the cyclists, along a twisting, rolling, collapsing road, she followed the tracks of the man in a hurry who had vanished. Then, all at once, worn out and having arrived at the house where she was expected, she bumped into nimble Pierre, who was on his way back.

  “Have we arrived?” she asked.

  “Not only have we arrived, but we’re setting off again. I’ve fixed everything, we’re going somewhere else.”

  “How can one tell if one has arrived,” Hedwige said one day, “if one never stops?”

  The more he rushed, the more emaciated Pierre became; he grew thinner as Hedwige filled out.

  Every day, she became more resistant to anything that was not to do with her gestation, more deaf to the outside world. She enjoyed her condition intimately; she relished her physical life as a pregnant woman, she descended into that silo where her harvest was stored, with a short-sighted squint she tried to decipher something in the depths of her womb and she was already listening for the first jolts. As day followed day, she was beginning to stoop under her own weight.

  She was now spending entire days in bed, not saying anything, not doing anything. A colossal and welcome weariness overcame her. Faced with so much turmoil and insufficiency, she displayed joyful resignation. Although she was languishing, she knew that beneath her indolence some very intense labour was going on; simultaneously motionless and breathtakingly active, not moving a little finger, but secretly a thousand times more impetuous than the lethargic Pierre, she was collaborating with nature with all her strength, building herself up inwardly, massaging, palpating or articulating her ribs, she was applying the pointing to this tiny living machine who would subsequently only have to distend all his limbs to become a six-foot man. A surge of dazzled amazement consumed her, which her husband failed to understand. She was adoring a sort of cryptic idol, a sacred frog in her private pond, to which she paid an obscure form of worship which Pierre was excluded from; excluded, frustrated, sent back to his manly tasks. Yet he could not help returning to her and wearying her with his demands.

  One morning, she saw him coming in laden with flowers, looking affectionate.

  “Darling, I have a great favour to ask you.”

  “If it’s reasonable…” said Hedwige wearily.

  “I’d so much like to know what’s going on inside there… to be able to pay closer attention to both of you.”

  “But come on, Pierre, that’s not possible. Don’t be absurd all the time.”

  “It’s not in the least absurd and, on the contrary, totally normal. I’d like an X-ray, that’s all.”

  “X-rays are not made for the enjoyment of mere amateurs,” said Hedwige with a laugh. “Let me sleep now, you’re tiring me. I was kept awake all night by cramp. I don’t know how I can stretch out my poor swollen legs any more.”

  Pierre kissed her and felt sorry for her, but returned to the offensive.

  “Please understand me, I want to know how things are going on inside you.”

  “No, no,” Hedwige replied, embarrassed and jealous of her secret.

  “I want to see my child.”

  “What a strange idea! How childish you are! What do you expect to see? A beam of light under a door?”

  “I want to see this little creature and without further ado. Promise me,” he said in a rage.

  She gave in grudgingly because these quarrels exhausted her.

  The day Pierre received the large photograph stuck to a piece of card, he leapt in the air and could not contain himself.

  “I can hardly see anything. The image…”

  In a mist of greyness, the bottom of the ribcage could be made out, the murky shadow of the mother’s pelvis and the skeleton of the well-developed child, head low down, knees next to the chin, making a motionless somersault, with the ringed backbone filling out, and looking like a shrivelled-up Peruvian mummy, as in the most ancient human tombs, as in Neolithic earthenware jars.

  “How ugly it is!” said a disappointed Pierre.

  “It’s beautiful,” said an enthusiastic Hedwige.

  A few days later, it was something else. This time, Pierre wanted to listen to the heart of the embryo beating on the stethoscope. He bent over this large inhabited cavern that was Hedwige’s body, pressed his forehead to hers, plugged in the two earpieces, listening carefully for the whirr, for the delicate throbbing that was his child’s heart.

  “If you continue to harass me like this, he’ll have convulsions,” cried Hedwige in exasperation.

  CHAPTER XXI

  HEDWIGE WENT INTO her husband’s bedroom, having made sure that he had gone out.

  High-ceilinged, bright, with its fine natural lime-wood panelling, sparsely, yet nicely furnished, it was the most attractive room in the house. At the time they moved in, Hedwige had insisted that Pierre should have this room; seeing what his boisterousness had done to it, she must have regretted doing so. But Hedwige, out of loyalty, did not allow herself any regrets. She made up for this by taking advantage of Pierre’s absences to slip into his bedroom and impose her order on the disorder. Left to Pierre, the clutter sprang up with the spontaneity of a virgin forest. It was enough for him to breathe and bedlam ensued. He had an astonishing gift for disorganization and truly brilliant inconsistency; he created chaos in less time than it took the Demiurge to put an end to it.

  Hedwige sat down on the bed, or rather on some shoe-trees, the Journal de la Société asiatique and a bull—a Hittite gold idol—that had been left on the bed. Staring distractedl
y, she made a list of the work that awaited her. By sitting lower down, level with the chairs, she has a better view of the things left on them in successive layers. As if rubber boots and a pair of fourteen-kilo dumb-bells were not enough to crush and dirty the ancient velvet of the bergère, Pierre has left a suitcase precariously balanced on Hedwige’s favourite chair. Furthermore, he has no idea how to pack or unpack a suitcase. This luggage has been lying there since he returned from Aix-la-Chapelle, a few days previously. The tube of shaving soap has burst and stained his ties, a flask of cognac is still leaking over a pullover whose roll-neck collar conceals some hairbrushes. Pierre was due to leave in a few days’ time for Turin and he had left everything in a mess. An hour before the train, it would be enough for him to throw in a few more things to add to the jumble and shut the case without having emptied it, firstly by kneeling on it, then by treading on it. “Please, I beg you, let me do your packing,” she implored him. “Certainly not! I wouldn’t be able to find anything!” he replied.

  Today, Hedwige merely tidies up some of the smaller things, because her belly is too heavy. She had decided that she would gradually return the room to its period style, to its original perfection, and she would stop him making faces and playing the shipwrecked victim. Hedwige adored her home as though it were a living creature and it pained her to see it ruined. A puddle of water that was now evaporating was staining the patterned oak panels of a Louis XIV parquet floor. Pierre must have been drying himself in front of the radiator. For some mysterious reason, he never washed in the bathroom. A razor blade covered in facial hairs lay in the violet cavern of the fireplace in front of which, goodness knows why, he had been shaving. And he must have thought there was insufficient light, because he had tugged away at the damask curtains, which hung, torn from their rings, and resembled a mizzen sail put up during a gale, with their broken cords looking like discarded halyards.

  Hedwige, who sometimes argued with Pierre, but would never ever dream of blaming him, was for the first time consumed with indignation. This shambles was really unbearable! It was as if he did it deliberately. There was not one single pretty object that he had not broken, not one pleasant moment he had not disrupted, not one pleasure he had not rushed.

  In the waste-paper basket full of cigar ash (torn-up letters, on the other hand, were placed in the ashtray) Hedwige found a box of chocolates that Placide had brought. She grew furious at the sight of these pralines, which she had put aside to give to her mother; the previous day, Pierre had eaten a few of them, without enjoying them, simply because he could not stop himself from opening the box by pulling off the silk ribbons and the gold string, and tearing the whole thing apart. He really was impossible.

  Hedwige pulled herself together and felt ashamed of her petty-mindedness. Was she going to hold these trivial things against Pierre? Against Pierre, who was so generous, who always came home laden with flowers, his pockets full of funny, useful, ingenious and well-chosen little presents, Pierre who, only yesterday, had torn down some hawthorn blossom for her and the honeysuckle she loved from trees in the lane, and who had come home all scratched and with his hands bleeding. Hedwige felt moved for a second… just enough time to notice beneath the chest of drawers, from which Pierre had pulled off one of the engraved handles, a scarf that he had torn to shreds instead of undoing the knot. He had bought a dozen of them, just as he bought everything, in large quantities and, not knowing what to do with them, he lost them, gave them away indiscriminately, wrapped them around his visitors’ necks, just as at table he piled all the food that was left on the plates of his guests, who had already eaten their fill and were begging for mercy: for Pierre to be happy, the plate had to be empty, the course completed, everything consumed and the meal brought swiftly to its conclusion. Generosity or wastefulness? An odd sort of generosity! Tips and never any charitable donations, bills paid twice or three times over, and never anything for grateful colleagues. “And yet he is good,” thought Hedwige.

  She broke off and considered this notion: was he good? Is someone good when he is not even aware that others exist, when he does not even give himself time to look at them, to pause when faced with worry, grief, anger? Did Pierre even notice when people recoiled, shuddered, frowned, or the actual fear he aroused when, carried away by one of his impulses, he sped off and people fled for fear of being knocked over by him? If Pierre were good, he would be surrounded by people; yet he was alone.

  Hedwige tried to think of someone who loved Pierre, but she could not produce a single name; pals, and not many at that, but no friend. She would have liked to feel sorry for him, to invent excuses for him, but the defence turned into an indictment each time. She felt remorse; she did not feel bad about having these wicked thoughts; what bothered her was having them without Pierre realizing or being aware of them. She would have liked to confide in him and for him to justify himself. She would have liked to accuse him, sentence him and forgive him. Explanations are one of the great pleasures of living together. But to talk to Pierre heart to heart was impossible; on his better days, he listened distractedly, out of politeness, while thinking of other things. More often, no sooner had Hedwige begun speaking than Pierre would reply impatiently: “And so? Conclusion? Let’s get to the point!” “To get to the point” was his favourite phrase. To get to the point of what? Can one not talk without getting to the point of things? Must one always run head down, as if pursued by the Furies? What crime could he have committed that was so horrible that his whole life should be a forward rush!

  Hedwige tried hard to resist the image of Pierre that was inflicting itself on her, of Pierre pointlessly savaging objects, friendships, boxes of chocolates; she did not want to allow herself to be submerged by the great wave of bitterness that had taken hold of her when confronted by this disorder and wastefulness. She stood there gazing at the clothes from the previous day, still all muddy due to Pierre having dashed through puddles; dashed in pursuit of whom? Of what?

  She tried to visualize her husband’s face, his eyes and the lovely way they shifted so quickly to the corners of his eyelids, his taut nose that resembled a jib at the front of his face, his pointed and adventurous chin. But the image was fading; all she could see was a graph, a mechanical drawing, a robot with a hundred crooked arms that whirled around the room, grabbing at things, breaking them, grabbing at her, whirling her around and endangering her, her and the child.

  The door sprang ajar rather than opened; Pierre was already in the middle of the room and was glaring at Hedwige, who was bent over a drawer.

  “What are you doing there?” he cried, “why are you rearranging my things?”

  “I’m putting them into some sort of order,” Hedwige replied curtly.

  “You’re putting them into your sort of order.”

  “What does that mean, my sort of order? The whole world knows what orderliness is and that there is none where you are concerned.”

  “My sweet Hedwige,” said Pierre, “you must realize that the notion of orderliness is very subjective. It’s the outward projection of an inner state.”

  “So,” cried Hedwige in a voice that had grown shrill, “so all this jumble, is it you? Is this your soul?”

  “Why not? It’s a little whimsical, but it’s alive. Your own bedroom is pretty, but it looks like a Decorative Arts exhibition.”

  “And yours looks like a dustbin.”

  “Thank you… Listen,” he said, more conciliatory, “I didn’t come to discuss spring-cleaning, but to take you to see Madame Osiris… the clairvoyant.”

  He began to laugh:

  “Her salon is full of women cooks, but I’ve been promised favourable treatment. She will tell us whether it’s a boy or a girl…”

  He paused. Hedwige had turned her back on him and was looking out of the window so as not to see this irritating, grimacing, fanatical man.

  “What’s the matter, Hedwige? Won’t you come with me? Come now, pull yourself together! Whoever loves me follows me.”
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br />   Hedwige turned round, her teeth gritted:

  “I won’t follow you.”

  “So you don’t love me?”

  “Not at this moment, certainly.”

  “Because of… because of my disorderliness?… Because of the clairvoyant? Don’t be stubborn now, come.”

  He felt that he had chosen the wrong moment, that he had been wrong to insist, that by calling on Hedwige unexpectedly he had put her nerves on edge and was making himself odious, but he could not stop himself; upsetting Hedwige, hurting her and almost horrifying her were a good thing; they satisfied a spitefulness that was becoming exacerbated within him.

  “Go to the clairvoyant on your own,” said Hedwige, “don’t look into the crystal ball, you won’t see happiness there; you can read the tea leaves: your future is darkness.”

  All of a sudden she began to cry, her head buried in her scarf, with little choked sobs.

  “I’m frightened, something’s going to happen. You burn the candle at both ends. Life can’t go on like this, you’ll wear yourself out, you’ll go mad! And I’ll become a nervous wreck! There’s a curse upon you. Mother can sense it too.”

  Pierre stopped her severely:

  “Your family support me fully, I know. That’s not the question. What matters to me is to know whether you’re tired of me, whether you refuse to follow me towards greatness. Hurrying is my own particular greatness…”

  He looked at his wrist automatically.

  “There we go, now my watch has stopped! This flawless chronometer is quite impossible!”

  He took it off and handed it to Hedwige.

  “Have it repaired for me right away. I can’t live without a watch.”

  Hedwige took the gold strap with its square dial and looked at it with loathing.