by Raymond Jean
Most Holy Father, chance may well govern human destinies in such a way that, however provident he may be, no man has any power against it, but yet it loses its authority whenever God wishes to intervene. Whomsoever falls from as high as Your Holiness should turn to Jesus with prayers, and not against destiny with complaints. It was necessary that the vicar of Christ should pay with suffering and misery for the debt of other people’s errors; and the justice with which Heaven chastises sin would not have been made clear to all people, had your imprisonment not borne witness of it. Take consolation, therefore, from your afflictions, accepting that it is by God’s wish that you are at Caesar’s mercy and that you can suffer both divine mercy and human clemency. For a prince who is ever strong, ever prudent, ever prepared for the insults of fate, one who has done all he can to parry its blows, it may be an honour calmly to bear all the misfortunes that adversity asks him to bear: then what glory shall be yours if, girded with patience and having surpassed this prince in wit, constancy and wisdom, you suffer what God’s will imposes upon you…
The weather’s very warm. I’ve come out into the countryside for a walk in the woods. There’s nothing more astonishing than this turning point in the year when the first buds are still curled up in their resinous sheaths, just letting their green tips peep out. It’s as if the whole world is suspended in a fragile balance and there’s no telling which way it might swing. Landscapes are still hazy, misty. Luckily, smells are ahead of colours. There’s already a fresh new smell rising up from the earth.
I’ve put on a pair of espadrilles, as if to encourage the spring, but with thick socks. I’ve left my car at the entrance to a small clearing and I’m walking over a carpet of fallen leaves. I can feel the clarity of the air in my lungs. Just my bad luck, a jogging enthusiast in a tracksuit pops out from behind a tree and in a flash the solitude that was all my own is snatched away. I watch him run off along the path, shoulders high, back arched, regulating his breathing. At least I’m lucky it wasn’t Sora; we’d have had to have a conversation. If he’d felt like talking, and I can’t be at all sure he would. I get the feeling I irritate him, that he’s sort of sulking, or that Brazil really did turn his head – what I mean is turn his eyes away from me – and that he far from approves of my activities. Tough luck for me. I’d have done better to have gone back to university, started attending his seminars again, recycled myself. That’s most likely what he would have wanted. And to make love with him, before he gets too old. Rather than with that illiterate specimen I’m wasting my breath introducing to literature. I miss every opportunity. Always get it wrong. It takes a Philippe to have the patience to put up with that. The sort of patience that only comes with aerological engineering.
The jogger is followed, at a respectable distance, by a woman I hadn’t anticipated. His wife perhaps. She passes me, face red and held high, without seeing me. She’s opted for shorts. Rather an attractive figure. Large breasts that don’t slosh about too much as she runs. Long thighs supporting buttocks that make me envious. I’m reminded of Françoise and her gymnastics. She claims she manages to sit still at her typewriter only if she allows herself regular relaxation sessions for her forearms and shoulders. And sport, fresh air and the natural world are essential for that. She regularly goes running with her lawyers: sometimes one, sometimes the other, occasionally both. She’s full of dazzling illusions about me. Even wearing Lucky’s halter, I shone like a bright light in her eyes. She was convinced I’d go places with drama. I’d go places with my voice.
Well, here’s the proof that I’ve gone places. I’ve gone as far as the middle of this small wood, and I really don’t want to see another human being. After the husband, the wife… I hope there won’t be a string of child joggers. All I want to see are trees. There’s nothing quite like trees. I’d like to clean their trunks meticulously of their old bark, then hug them and kiss them, press my lips to their naked wood. Chew their young leaves the moment they appear. Scratch my face on dense thickets of evergreens. Walk on this earth without espadrilles or socks. Set off in search of grouse and stag beetles. Go deeper into the woods. Further still. And meanwhile allow my lips to utter these snatches, fragments, shards of things I’ve read that are dancing inside my head, these bits of pages I really ought to buckle down and learn by heart, if I want to give this profession of mine a bit more gloss, revenue and diversity. Oh, my God, who am I?
I thought nothing else could happen to me. That wasn’t allowing for the calendar. La Générale had a surprise in store for me on 1 May. I arrive at her house as usual, having unsuspectingly accepted her suggestion that I should come and read to her on this date, and in the morning too: she told me the day had real significance for her and that she’d like to spend it with me.
I’ve hardly crossed the threshold before I sense tension in the air. Gertrude (I’ve spent six months not knowing her name) comes up to me with a riding whip in her hand and a distraught expression on her face, rolling her eyes so I can see virtually nothing but the whites. She hands the crop to me: Whip me! Seeing my astonishment, she says it again, lips aquiver: Whip me! She looks pale, and the way her hair is scraped fiercely back into a bun exaggerates the distress on her face. Now she’s quivering all over. I soothe her, suggest she puts the whip back where it came from (on the shelves in the living room, it’s part of the museum, a memento of the Général) and ask her for an explanation. She says she’s ashamed of herself, that she’s guilty of an abomination and deserves no better than the knout, that for a second time she’s failed to anticipate one of her mistress’s pranks and has led me, such a devoted reader, into a terrible trap. I think I can see that the ‘first time’ was the business with the union demonstration which scandalized the neighbourhood. What does the second have in store? Gertrude won’t say. She falls to her knees before me, begs me to punish her, whip her. Besides, she adds, for me this fair punishment would be a pleasure. She starts tugging the bottom of her starched blouse from the waistband of her skirt, to bare her torso. I urge her to stop this ridiculous behaviour and tell me what’s going on. She eventually makes up her mind to talk. Here it is: the countess has absolutely no intention of devoting herself to a reading session, she wants to go to the Labour Day demonstrations and is counting on me to go with her. She’s already dressed.
Not believing my ears, I rush to the bedroom, open the door and what do I see? An ageing aristocrat from a bygone age looking at herself in the wardrobe mirror, trussed up in a tight black lamé dress that gives her spare tyres without denying her a degree of elegance, with a sort of boa tossed around her neck and a feathered hat on her head. She spies me in the mirror, turns round, comes over to me and says: Nouchka, you’re going to take me to the Labour Day parade! It’s so clear, so definitive, so peremptory that I can’t see how to get out of it. Particularly as the countess has just added, with a wateriness about the eyes, that it may be her last Labour Day. I help her put on her old fur coat and hand her her walking stick. I try to put it off a little longer by saying I don’t even know where we have to go, I’ve no idea where they hold this gathering. She grabs her handbag, takes out a piece of paper, a map with a line traced across it: the itinerary for the march. She’s thought of everything. Anyway, she says, the procession is gathering outside the Mairie. If you don’t have your car, Nouchka, we’ll take the bus. She drags me out. I think I can hear cries and lamentations and the stamping of feet from the kitchen.
It’s a very long time since I saw a Labour Day demonstration. I have to admit that this one strikes me as rather pathetic. There’s no crowd in front of the Mairie to listen to the breathless haranguing of a union representative who’d dearly love to motivate people heart and soul, but doesn’t have the oratory means. La Générale’s presence is therefore all the more noticeable. Not that she’s trying to hide, mind you. She’s incredible, robustly throwing her weight about, waving her stick, hailing a group of immigrant workers, probably road sweepers, and calling them ‘comrades’, wanting to buy som
e lily of the valley from a vendor, snapping up twenty stems in one go and handing them out around her, paying with a big banknote without expecting any change and fidgeting impatiently. People are whispering, muttering, pointing her out to each other. I don’t feel very comfortable. But my discomfort is at its most acute when, once the customary rallying cheers are over and the procession is forming, she obviously intends to feature in its front line, on my arm, despite the embarrassment of the organizers, who don’t seem to know how to handle this initiative of hers. Some discreetly ask me for explanations, which I’m quite incapable of providing. The procession eventually sets off and there she is in the first row, linked to me with one elbow and the secretary of the local trade union council with the other, limping slightly, and even having a little trouble putting one foot in front of the other, but radiant and clearly determined to see this through to the very end, albeit at the expense of inevitably slowing the pace of all the other demonstrators through the streets of our town. I twist my neck to check on her for fear she might faint in this throng of people. I can see that she’s managed to pin some lily of the valley to one side of her coat, and to the other the red carnation and ear of corn that symbolize the Hungarian Uprising. People watching us march past are initially stunned to silence, but then applaud thunderously. Many of them seem to recognize her. They’re even cheering from the windows to acknowledge her favour.
It feels as if this will go on for ever. But when we come to the Place de la Libération, just as we file around the flowerbed in the middle of the square, why do I have to go and see a little girl on the pavement waving her hat and scarf at me? It’s Clorinde. For a moment I think I’m dreaming, caught up in some sort of hallucination where everything’s jumbled up and flung together like in a kaleidoscope. But no, it really is her. It’s so really her that she breaks away, starts running towards us, crosses the square and comes to join the procession. Now look how I’ve been framed, right and left, in the town centre, in this crowd, bang in the middle of the day, just in case I wanted to preserve my professional anonymity! I quake at the thought that, on top of everything else, Clorinde may have run away without a second thought again. Thank goodness, though, she reassures me under her breath. She tells me her mother’s with her, and it was her mother who recognized me from a distance and suggested Clorinde should run over to me, and they both want our reading sessions to start again, they’re waiting for me, I must come back. As I lean in to hear her better, she plants a hot fresh little kiss on my cheek. She smells of lily of the valley.
Another summons, a far from affable one, from Superintendent Beloy. This time he’s out and out angry. There’s a policeman standing in his office and Beloy doesn’t even ask him to leave when I arrive; the man eyes me with an ironic, wolfish glint. The superintendent wants to remain polite with me, courteous, he says, but he feels I’ve overstepped the permitted limits. That exhibitionism on Labour Day was barely credible. It affected the whole town, yes, the whole town. And I certainly can’t go saying it was nothing to do with me. I was in the front row of the procession, supporting La Générale with my arm, none of that happened by chance, impromptu. What have I to say in my defence?
He looks really furious. This must be serious. I wonder whether the policeman’s going to put me in handcuffs. I reply, of course, that Labour Day processions are traditional and peaceful, and, as far as I know, it’s not against the law to participate in them. He leaps (rather deftly, it has to be said) from his chair, sits on the corner of his desk and stares at me, pity tussling with the anger in his eyes. That’s not what this is about, he says. Don’t play all innocent, and don’t play the fool either. Everyone has a right to join in the procession… What I want to know is why you drag this respectable woman… unhinged but respectable… into such incongruous situations?… Are you trying to be provocative? Is this a delayed contribution to the riots of ’68?… Openly and publicly defying our town… because that’s the overall impression, dear Madame… I’ve been sent letters, would you believe… I’ve got a drawer full… I’ve been collared by the family, who don’t know what to do next… The local authorities aren’t at all impressed… The regional authorities have been in touch, the national ones too… By now the Minister for the Interior will have been informed… things happen quickly by telephone, you know… and I’m actually the one who’s responsible for public order and security here…
I ask him calmly whether the town’s security was put in danger. The question infuriates him. Oh, oh, he says, you think you’re very clever… but there are terrorists everywhere… usually hiding behind outward appearances that are above all suspicion… They even look as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth… Well, on that point, I can tell you I wasn’t taken in!… What bothers me most isn’t the grotesque sabre-rattling aspect of this business… although that is disturbing for the more prominent figures in town… as it is for poor Générale Dumesnil herself… And yes, Madame, I would even say that it’s disturbing for our unions, our workers, who’ve come out of this clownish performance looking ridiculous… What’s getting at me is your role in all this… what you’re really doing in people’s homes under the pretence of reading to them… There are even whisperings in the bookshops and libraries, you know… That ad, that basically rather peculiar ad that you ran in the papers…
Arrest me, I say. I look over to the policeman. I’m ready to offer up my wrists. Beloy stops talking, as if gathering himself before pummelling me with more irrefutable accusations. I think he’s going to mention Clorinde, who was also compromised by the demonstration. He must be keeping that for the end. The final blow. But no, he doesn’t say anything about her. His informers must have been trailing the procession before she joined in. He doesn’t know everything. Still, he knows enough to eye me with undisguised contempt, to look me slowly up and down, and tell me that he’ll always be implacably, resolutely opposed to troublemakers like me, and he’s got his eye on me. Which, I see, he certainly has.
After that showdown, I was pretty sure I’d lost any chance of building up a clientele among the town’s prominent figures. Yet now, against all expectations, I receive a letter from a very elderly magistrate, a widower who lives alone and can hardly read any more, he says, because his sight’s now so bad, and would like to benefit from my assistance. Perhaps from my company too, he adds.
I’m slightly wary. Isn’t this going to end up as La Générale and Michel Dautrand rolled into one? Mind you, who can I expect to contact me apart from the elderly, the infirm, the sick and the idle? I’ve known that from the start. I’ve known that from the very first. I took the risk. To carry on or to stop. But if I carry on I shouldn’t go hoping for new types of requests. Settling into this job means, I fear, settling into repetitiveness. We’ll soon see. So I make my way to the home of this president of the court. Pleasant-looking for his age. A double-breasted suit, austerely cut, a tie. A Légion d’Honneur ribbon. A bald head crowned with white hairs. Thick-lensed glasses. Dignity. Courtesy. He starts by telling me he’s heard about me, in the most favourable terms, about me and my talent. The quality of my voice. Reading was his life’s passion but now, alas, his eyes are failing him. He heaves a sigh. Perhaps I could lend him mine, it would be an incalculable gift, particularly in this, life’s twilight, which he’s currently experiencing. It would also mean that, once or twice a week, he could escape the cruel loneliness of an ageing magistrate cut off from the things of this world but struggling to let go of them, what with books being the last link that can still connect us to the world when we can’t be wholly a part of it ourselves.
I think he put that extremely well. This retired old magistrate must be a cultured man. For the first time I feel it’s not up to me to choose what we’ll read, the initiative needs to come from him. He must know what he does and doesn’t find interesting. What he wants to listen to. Besides, I’m sure he has an extensive library. I glance around the walls of the room, and do indeed see many shelves full of handsomely bound books. P
lush décor, a bit dark, a bit cushioned, but orderly, well kept. I keep expecting to see a door open and the inevitable housekeeper appearing. But not a sound, no creak of a door, however slight, no footsteps. Does he live completely alone? He looks in control of his life. In the same way that he looks as if he knows what he wants. I’m sure I wasn’t wrong about the choice of books. I let him make suggestions. I tell him I’ll make a note of what he wants and do some preparatory work, closely studying the texts he’d like to hear so as to give him the best possible reading of them. I have a special little room at home, all in blue, where I can practise. If I don’t have the books, perhaps he could take them from his collection and agree to lend them to me. I’d take the greatest care of them, he can be sure of that.
He looks delighted, overwhelmed. The thought of that blue room has even brought a hint of emotion, a fleeting tenderness to his face. I’m exactly the person he needs. Should we discuss rates? No, he definitely doesn’t want to. Anyway, he lives comfortably on his magistrate’s pension and there can be no remuneration adequate to repay the great service I shall be doing him, if, indeed, I consent to accept his choices on the subject of reading matter. Dear Marie-Constance, he says, if you would allow me to do away with pointless formalities and call you by your first name, just as a father would his daughter, dear Marie-Constance, I can tell you’re an enlightened woman and, with the experience you must have accumulated, I’m sure you yourself could make excellent choices, but the old man that I am finds the years rapidly overtaking him and sometimes thinks there are books, classics, that he’s never had time to read, and he wouldn’t want to die without knowing them… Oh yes, in terms of reading there are unfulfilled desires, as in other terms… Do you understand? He sighs again, very loudly: Oh, if you’d be so kind!
