'There's nothing wrong,' I said. 'It's just that, as an individual, I've failed in life.'
'So have we all,' he said, 'you, I, all the people here in the station buffet. We are every one of us failures. The secret of life is to recognize the fact early on, and become reconciled. Then it no longer matters.'
'It does matter,' I said, 'and I am not reconciled.'
He finished his drink and glanced at the clock on the wall.
'There is no need,' he observed, 'to go to la Grande-Trappe immediately. The good monks are waiting upon eternity, they can wait a few more hours for you. Let us go where we can drink in greater comfort, and perhaps dine, because, being a family man, I am in no great hurry to go home.'
It was then that I remembered the man in the car who had spoken to me outside. 'Are you called Jean?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said, 'Jean de Gue. Why?'
'Someone mistook me for you, then, outside the station. Some fellow in a car shouted, "Hullo, Jean," and when I told him he was mistaken he seemed amused, and obviously thought I, or rather you, didn't want to be recognized.'
'That wouldn't surprise me. What did you do?'
'I did nothing. He drove off laughing, calling out something about seeing me on Sunday.'
'Oh yes. La chasse ...'
My words must have started a new train of thought, for his expression changed, and I wished I could have read his mind. The blue eyes clouded, and I wondered if I looked as he did when a problem, not easy to solve, thrust its way to the surface of my mind.
He beckoned to a porter who was waiting patiently with a couple of valises outside the swing-door of the buffet.
'Did you say you left your car by the cathedral?' he asked.
'Yes,' I answered.
'Then if you don't mind giving room to my valises, we might fetch it and drive somewhere for dinner?'
'Certainly. Anywhere you say.'
He tipped the porter, summoned a taxi and we drove away. It was odd, and like a dream. So often, dreaming, I was the shadow, watching myself take part in the action of the dream. Now it was happening, and I had the same lack of substance, the same lack of will.
'So he was quite deceived, then?'
'Who?'
His voice, almost like the voice of conscience, startled me, for we had not spoken since getting into the taxi.
'The man who hailed you outside the station,' he said.
'Oh yes, completely. He will probably accuse you when you meet. I remember now - he knew you had been away, because he suggested your trip had been unsuccessful. Does that convey anything?'
'Only too well.'
I did not pursue the subject. It was none of my business. After a moment I glanced at him, half furtively, and saw that he was looking as furtively at me. Our eyes met, and instead of smiling instinctively, because of the bond of likeness, the sensation was unpleasant, like contact with danger. I turned away from him to gaze out of the window, and, as the taxi swerved and pulled up by the cathedral, the deep, solemn bells sounded for the Angelus. It was a moment that never failed to move me. The summons was always unexpected, and in a strange way touched a nerve. Tonight the bells rang like a challenge, loud and compelling, as we climbed from the taxi. Then the clanging softened to a murmur, and the murmur to a sigh, and the sigh to a reproach. Two or three people passed through the doors into the cathedral. I went and unlocked the car. My companion waited, looking at the car with interest.
'A Ford Consul,' he said. 'What year is it?'
'I've had it two years. Done about fifteen thousand.'
'You are satisfied with it?'
'Very. I don't get much use out of it except at week-ends.'
As I stowed away his two valises in the boot he asked me all sorts of questions about the car with the interest of a schoolboy trying out a new machine. He fingered the switches, felt the seats to test the springs, fiddled with the gears and the indicators, and finally asked, with a burst of enthusiasm, whether he might drive her.
'Certainly,' I said. 'You know this town better than I do. Go ahead.'
He settled himself with assurance behind the wheel and I climbed in beside him. As he turned the car away from the cathedral, and so out to the rue Voltaire, he continued to enthuse in schoolboy fashion, murmuring, 'Magnificent, excellent!' under his breath, obviously enjoying every moment of what soon turned out to be, from my own rather cautious standard, a hair-raising ride. When we had jumped one set of lights, and sent an old man leaping for his life, and forced a large Buick driven by an infuriated American into the side of the street, he proceeded to circle the town in order, so he explained, to try the car's pace. 'You know,' he said, 'it amuses me enormously to use other people's possessions. It is one of life's greatest pleasures.' I closed my eyes as we took a corner like a bob-sleigh.
'Meanwhile,' he said, 'you are probably dying of hunger?'
'Not at all,' I murmured. 'I'm at your disposal.' It struck me, as I spoke, that the French language was too fine, too polite.
'I was thinking of taking you to the only restaurant where it is possible to eat superbly,' he said, 'but I have changed my mind. I am known there, and somehow I feel that tonight I want to be without identity. It isn't every day that one comes face to face with oneself.'
His words gave me the same sense of discomfort that I had experienced in the taxi. The likeness between us was not something that either of us wanted to show off in public. I realized suddenly that I did not wish to be seen with him. I did not want waiters to look at us. I felt in some way furtive and ashamed. The sensation was peculiar. He began to slow down as we approached the centre of the town.
'Possibly,' he said, 'I won't go home tonight after all, but take a room at a hotel.' He seemed to be thinking aloud. I don't believe he expected a reply. 'After all,' he went on, 'by the time we have dined, it would be rather late to telephone for Gaston to bring in the car. And anyway, they are not expecting me.'
I have made the same sort of excuses myself to put off facing something unpleasant. I wondered why he was not anxious to return.
'And you,' he said, turning to me as we waited for the lights to change, 'after all, you may decide you do not want to go to la Grande-Trappe. You, too, could stay in a hotel.'
His voice was odd. It was as though he was feeling his way towards some sort of agreement between us, some sort of solution to a problem that neither of us fully understood, and as he looked at me the expression in his eye was probing and at the same time evasive, masked.
'Perhaps,' I said. 'I don't know.'
He drove through the centre of the town, an enthusiast no longer but preoccupied, and he did not draw up before either of the main hotels that I had noticed earlier in the day, but came to a quarter where the buildings appeared greyer, drabber, closer to the factories and warehouses. In the meaner streets were cheap pensions, dingy lodging-houses, and places for a night or an hour where passports were not demanded and questions never asked.
'It is quieter here,' he said, and I still could not tell whether he spoke to me or uttered his thoughts aloud. But I did not think much of his choice as he stopped the car in front of a shabby house sandwiched between others equally drab, above whose half-open door the word 'Hotel', in dim blue electric light, gave warning of its nature.
'Sometimes,' he said, 'these places can be useful. One does not always want to run up against one's friends.'
I said nothing. He switched off the engine and opened the door.
'Are you coming?' he said.
I had no desire to penetrate the mysteries of the Tout Confort that I saw advertised, in small letters, beneath the blue light, but I climbed out of the car and heaved his two valises from the boot.
'I don't think so,' I said. 'You go inside and book your room if you want to. I'd rather dine first and then decide what to do.'
I was more inclined to my northern route - the drive to Mortagne, and then the side-road to the Abbaye de la Grande-Trappe.
'As you like,' he
said, shrugging, and I lit a cigarette and watched him push through the door into the hotel. The drinks I had swallowed at the station buffet were beginning to take effect. Nothing that was happening had reality, and in a state of blurred confusion I asked myself what I was doing here in an unattractive side-street in Le Mans, waiting for a companion who less than an hour ago had been quite unknown to me, who was still a stranger, but who, because of chance resemblance, had taken charge of my evening, directing its course for good or ill. I wondered whether I should slide into the car and drive away, and so be quit of the whole encounter, which, fascinating at first, now seemed menacing, even evil. I was reaching for the switch when he returned.
'That's fixed,' he said. 'Come and eat. No need to take the car. I know of a place just round the corner.'
I couldn't summon an excuse to be quit of him, and, despising my own weakness, I followed him along the street like a shadow.
He led me to a place half restaurant, half bistro, in the next street. The entrance was stacked with bicycles - it must have been the headquarters of a cycling club - and the inside crowded with youths in coloured jerseys, singing and shouting, while a knot of older men, workmen, played some dice game at a table. He pushed his way with assurance through the turmoil, and we sat down at a table behind a battered screen, the strident voices of the youths half-drowned by a crackling radio.
The patron, waiter and bar-tender in one, thrust an indecipherable menu into my hands, and a glass of wine was before me and a plate of soup that I hadn't ordered; for the ceiling was now merging with the floor and time losing significance, and my companion was leaning across the table, his glass raised, saying, 'To your sojourn at la Grande-Trappe.' Sometimes a fourth drink can have the temporary effect of clearing the confusion caused by the previous three, and as I ate and drank the face in front of me swung back into focus, no longer uncanny or a threat, but benign and familiar as my own in the mirror, smiling when I smiled, frowning when I frowned; and his voice, which seemed to be an echo of my own, urged me into conversation, prodded me into confession, so that I found myself talking about loneliness, death, the empty shell of my personal world, the uncertainty of feeling, the absence of all emotion.
'And so,' I heard my voice saying, 'surely at la Grande-Trappe, where men live by silence, they must have an answer to this, they must know how to fill the vacuum, for they have deliberately gone into darkness to find light ... whereas I ...' I paused, trying to clarify my meaning, because what I was trying to tell him was vital to our two selves. 'In other words,' I continued, 'at la Grande-Trappe they might not give the answer, but they could tell me where to look for it; for although we must each have an individual answer to our individual problems, just as every lock has its own key, yet might not their answer be universal, just as a master-key opens every lock?'
His blue eyes, flippant and amused, were not the reflection of my drunken mood but the doubt that follows after it, the mockery on waking.
'No, my friend,' he said. 'If you knew as much about religion as I do you would run from it like the plague. I have a sister who thinks of nothing else. I have learnt one thing in life, which is that the only motive force in human nature is greed. Insects, animals, men, women, children, we live by greed alone. It is not very pretty, but what of it? The thing to do is to minister to the greed, and to give people what they want. The trouble is, they are never satisfied.' He sighed, and poured himself another glass of wine. 'You complain that your life is empty,' he said. 'To me it sounds like paradise. An apartment to yourself, no family ties, no business worries, the whole of London a playground, if you wish - though personally I did not find London gay when I was in exile there for a time in the war, but at any rate the city is vast and free. It does not hang about your neck like a rope.'
His voice changed, becoming hard, and there was resentment in his eyes, and exasperation - it was the first sign he had given that he too had his personal problem which he did not wish to face - and he leant forward across the table and said, 'You have all the luck in the world, and you are not content. Your parents died many years ago, you told me, and you have no one to make any claim upon you. You are a free man, to wake and eat and work and sleep alone. Count your blessings, and forget this nonsense of la Grande-Trappe.'
Like all solitary people I had become glib of tongue and indiscreet too soon, warming to sympathy. He knew all the little dullnesses of my life, and I knew nothing of his.
'Very well, then,' I said, 'now it's your turn for the confessional. What's your trouble?'
I thought for a moment that he might be going to tell me. Something wavered in his eyes, a flicker of uncertainty, then it was gone again and in its stead the tolerant smile, the lazy shrug.
'Oh, me!' he said. 'My one trouble is that I have too many possessions. Human ones.' And his gesture of dismissal as he lit a cigarette was a warning not to question further. I could be introspective if I liked, exploring my own black moods; but I must not probe his. We had finished eating, but we went on sitting there, smoking and drinking, and the chatter of the laughing boys with the bicycles came in great gusts above the tortured singing from the radio, with the scraping of chairs and the arguments of the workmen at their game of dice.
I fell silent, having suddenly no more to say, and I was aware of his eyes upon me all the time, bringing a strange discomfort. When he said he must telephone home, and got up and left the table, I was relieved, as if his absence made it easier to breathe. When he returned I said, 'Well?' more as a comment than a question, and he answered briefly, 'I told them to send the car in to fetch me tomorrow.' Calling the patron, he paid the bill, brushing my feeble attempts aside, and then seized my arm and pushed me through the singing youths into the street.
It was dark, and raining once again. The street was empty. There is nothing gloomier than the fringe of a provincial town on a wet evening, and I murmured something about finding the car and going on my way and what an experience it had been to fall in with him, but he went on holding my arm and said, 'I can't let you go like this. It's too unusual, too bizarre.' We came once more to the entrance of his shabby, dim hotel, and I looked through the still open door and saw there was no one behind the desk. He noticed it too, and looked over his shoulder and said quickly, 'Come upstairs. Let's have one more drink before you go.' His voice was urgent, insistent, as though we had little time to lose. I protested, but he half led me up the stairs and across a passage. He took a key out of his pocket, and opened the door, and switched on the light of the small drab single room. 'Here,' he said, 'sit down, make yourself at home,' and I sat on the bed because his open valise was on the chair. He had thrown out his pyjamas and hair-brushes and a pair of slippers, and now he brought out his flask and was pouring cognac into a tooth-glass. Once again the ceiling hit the floor as it had done in the bistro, and it seemed to me that what was happening was fated, inevitable, that I should never be rid of him or he of me: he would follow me downstairs and come with me in the car, and I should never shake him off. He was my shadow or I was his, and we were bound to each other through eternity.
'What's the matter? Are you ill?' he said, and his eyes were peering into mine.
I stood up, torn between two desires - one to open the door and get away downstairs, and the other to stand beside him once again as we had done at the station buffet, and look into the mirror. I knew that the first was wisdom and the other somehow evil, and yet it had to be done, it had to be experienced once again. He must have guessed my intent, for we turned with one accord and stared, and here, in the small quiet room, the likeness was more uncanny and more horrible than it had been in the crowded buffet, with all the noise and smoke and sound of people, or in the bistro, where I had not thought about it. This wretched room with the patterned wallpaper and the creaking floor was like a tomb shutting out the world: we were here together and there was no escape. He thrust the tooth-glass of cognac into my trembling hand and himself drank from the flask, and then he said, his voice unsteady a
s my own - or was it I who spoke and he who listened? - 'Shall I put on your clothes and you wear mine?'
I remember that one of us laughed as I hit the floor.
3
Someone was knocking on the door. The sound went on and on, breaking through a dream to consciousness, until finally I roused myself from heaven knows what depths of darkness and shouted 'Entrez!', staring about me at the unfamiliar room, which gradually became known to me, and real. A man came in, wearing a faded, old-fashioned chauffeur's uniform, with buttoned coat, breeches and leggings, and holding his cap in his hands. His build was short and square, his eyes deep brown, and he looked at me from the doorway with compassion.
'Monsieur le Comte is awake at last?' he said.
I considered him a moment, frowning, and then I glanced once more about the room and saw one valise open on the chair, another on the floor, and the clothes of my late companion thrown over the end of the bed on which I lay. I was wearing a striped pyjama coat I did not recognize. On the washstand were the tooth-glass and the flask of cognac. There was no sign of my own clothes, and I could not remember taking them off or putting them away. All I remembered was standing in front of the mirror with my companion by my side.
'Who are you?' I said to the chauffeur. 'What do you want?'
He sighed, flashed a sympathetic eye at the disorder of the room, and said, 'Monsieur le Comte would like to sleep a little longer?'
'Monsieur le Comte isn't here,' I said. 'He must have gone out. What's the time?'
The events of the night before became clearer in my mind and I remembered how my companion had gone to the telephone, while we sat in the bistro, and had given orders for a car to come and fetch him the next day. This must be the chauffeur who had now arrived, and mistook me for his master. The man looked at his watch and told me it was five o'clock.
'What do you mean - five o'clock?' I said. I glanced at the window. It was broad daylight, and I could hear the sound of traffic outside.
The Scapegoat Page 3
