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COPYRIGHT
Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
This Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition published in 2005
Harper Perennial
Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1993 (as a Flamingo Modern Classic) and 1984 (reprinted five times)
First published in France in 1954 by Librairie Gallimard
under the title Les Mandarins First English translation published in Great Britain by Collins 1957
Copyright © Librairie Gallimard 1954
English translation copyright © Collins 1957
Introduction copyright © Doris Lessing 1993
PS section copyright © Jon Butler 2005 except ‘Equals Not Sequels’ by Kathy Lette
© Kathy Lette 2005
PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © MAY 2018 ISBN 9780007405589
Version: 2018-05-16
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DEDICATION
To Nelson Algren
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
P. S. Ideas, Interviews & Features …
About the Author
Biography
Did You Know?
About the Book
Equals Not Sequels
After the War: The Intellectual ‘Mandarins’ of Paris Life
Read On
If You Liked This, You Might Like …
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION
by Doris Lessing
Even before The Mandarins arrived in this country it was being discussed with the lubricious excitement used for fashionable gossip. Everyone knew the novel was about the political and sexual lives of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and their friends, a glamorous group for several reasons. First, they were associated with the French Resistance, and of all the heroic myths of the Second World War the Resistance was the most potent. Then, they were French, and it is hard now to explain the degree of attractiveness France had for the British after the war. It was only partly that we knew our cooking and our clothes to be inferior, that they had a style and panache we lacked. The British had been locked up in their island for the long years of the war, could not refresh themselves outside it, and France wore the features of some forbidden Paradise. And, too, intellectual communism, intellectuals generally, were glamorous in a way they never have been here, not least because what The Mandarins were debating along the Left Bank were questions about the Soviet Union scarcely acknowledged in socialist circles here, or, if so, only in lowered voices. There was another reason why The Mandarins was expected to read like a primer to better living, and that was the relationship between Sartre and de Beauvoir, presented by them, or at least by Sartre, as exemplary. It was close and matey, like a marriage, but without the legalities and obligations of one, while both partners had absolute freedom to pursue sexual adventures they fancied. This arrangement, needless to say, appealed particularly to men, and innumerable sceptical women were lectured by actual or possible mates on how they should take a lesson from Simone, a woman above the petty jealousies that disfigure our sex. As it turned out, women were right to be sceptical, but there was for us too an attraction in that comradely relationship over there in Les Deux Magots and the Flore, where Jean-Paul and his long-term woman Simone together with all his petites amies, where Simone and her steady, Jean-Paul, and her other little loves, male and female, all forgathered daily to partake of lofty intellectual fare, watched by hundreds of reverential disciples. But it turned out there was nothing of this ideal relationship in the novel, and the Simone figure, Anne, was presented as a dry and lonely woman, in a companionable marriage, resigned to early middle age.
Sartre then stood for an adventurous optimism about science. There was a film about him, showing him stepping out of a helicopter, then the newest of our toys, hailing the brave new world of technology, the key to unlimited progress. We needed this kind of re-evaluation, after watching for the years of the war how war used our inventions and discoveries for destruction.
And then, there was Existentialism. Just as most communists had never read more of Marx than The Communist Manifesto, most people attracted by Existentialism had read Sartre’s plays and novels. Thus diluted, it was agreeable latter-day stoicism that steadily confronted the terrors of the Universe while refusing the weakminded consolations of religion; courageous, solitary, clear-minded.
The Left Bank was, quite simply, the intellectual centre of the world, no less, and here was The Mandarins, a guide to it written by one of its most glittering citizens.
But Paris was only the half of it. Simone de Beauvoir had had a much publicized affair with Nelson Algren, and the novel describes it. Algren, then, was famous for The Man with the Golden Arm, and A Walk on the Wild Side, cult novels romanticizing the drug and crime cultures of big American cities. Drugs, crime and poverty were as glamorous as, earlier, had been La Vie Bohème with its TB, its drunkenness, the misery of poverty. The bourgeoisie have always loved squalor – in fiction. (In those days the words bourgeoisie, bourgeois, petit-bourgeois tripped off all our tongues a dozen times a day, but now it is hard to use them without being overcome by staleness, by boredom.) To be bourgeois was bad, middle-class values so disgusting that people dying of drugs, or in prison for selling drugs, or with lives wasted by poverty were in every way preferable, full of poetry and adventure that cocked a snook at capitalism and the middle class. Where Simone de Beauvoir loved and was loved by Nelson Algren it was the symbolical mating of worlds apparently opposite but linked by a contempt for the established order, and a need to destroy it.
All that has gone, no glamour left, and to read The Mandarins without those flattering veils has to be a sobering experience. What remains? For one, the politics of that time. Young people are always asking, But how was it possible that people could support the Soviet Union at all? Here it all is, the debates, the agonizings, the betrayals, the hair-splittings, the compromises and the self-deceptions. What it was all based on, what was never questioned, was the belief that no matter how terrible the Soviet Union was, it had to be better than capitalism, bound to be the future of the whole world once the infant communism was over its teething troubles. Another never-questioned pillar was that whatever decisions one made, whatever stance one took, were of importance to the whole world: the future of the world was at stake, dependent on the ‘correct’ or otherwise decisions of those people who – as the phrase then went – knew the score. Initiates – that was what they were, or how they saw themselves.
These politics already have something of the flavour of ancient religious squabbles, but the novel will continue to be read, I think, for an ironical reason: its brilliant portraits of women.
There is Josette, the sweet, passive beauty who was a collaborator with the Germans because of a rapacious and brutal mother, quite one of the nastiest women in fiction. There is Paula who will not admit that her great love is in fact ditching her, and lives in a state of delusion, claiming him for herself. Above all, there is Nadine, daughter as it were of this group of mandarins, sullen, angry, always resentful because of past but unspecified wrongs, unscrupulous, manipulative, unlovable and unloving, and finally getting her man by the oldest trick in the book. She is a psychological black hole, absorbing into itself all life, joy, pleasure, love. Never has there been a more unlikeable character, nor a more memorable one, for she dominates the book, even when she is off-stage. And finally, there is Anne Dubreuilh herself, the psychiatrist, whose kindness, patience and commonsense on behalf of others do not seem to do much for her own happiness.
The Mandarins is a novel that chronicles its time, but with all the advantages and disadvantages of immediacy, for large parts of it are like the hot, quick impatience of reporting.
CHAPTER ONE
Henri found himself looking at the sky again – a clear, black crystal dome overhead. It was difficult for the mind to conceive of hundreds of planes shattering that black crystalling silence! And suddenly, words began tumbling through his head with a joyous sound – the offensive was halted … the German collapse had begun … at last he would be able to leave. He turned the corner of the quay. The streets would smell again of oil and orange blossoms, in the evening there would be light, people would sit and chat in outdoor cafés, and he would drink real coffee to the sound of guitars. His eyes, his hands, his skin were hungry. It had been a long fast!
Slowly, he climbed the icy stairs. ‘At last!’ Paula exclaimed, hugging him tightly, as if they had just found each other again after a long, danger-filled separation. Over her shoulder, he looked at the tinselled Christmas tree, reflected to infinity in the large mirrors. The table was covered with plates, glasses, and bottles; bunches of holly and mistletoe lay scattered at the foot of a step-stool. He freed himself and threw his overcoat on the couch.
‘Have you heard the wireless?’ he asked. ‘The news is wonderful.’
‘Is it?’ Paula said. ‘Tell me, quickly!’ She never listened to the wireless; she wanted to hear the news only from Henri’s mouth.
‘Haven’t you noticed how clear the sky is tonight? They say there are a thousand planes smashing the rear of von Rundstedt’s armies.’
‘Thank God! They won’t come back, then.’
‘There never was any question of their coming back,’ he said. But the same thought had crossed his mind, too.
Paula smiled mysteriously. ‘I took precautions, just in case.’
‘What precautions?’
‘There’s a tiny room no bigger than a cupboard in the back of the cellar. I asked the concierge to clear it out for me. You could have used it as a hiding place.’
‘You shouldn’t have spoken to the concierge about a thing like that; that’s how panics are started.’
She clutched the ends of her shawl tightly in her left hand, as if she were protecting her heart. ‘They would have shot you,’ she said. ‘Every night I hear them; they knock, I open the door, I see them standing there.’ Motionless, her eyes half closed, she seemed actually to be hearing voices.
‘Don’t worry,’ Henri said cheerfully, ‘it will not happen now.’
She opened her eyes and let her hands fall to her sides. ‘Is the war really over?’
‘Well, it won’t last much longer,’ Henri replied, placing the stool under one of the heavy beams that crossed the ceiling. ‘Want me to help you?’ he asked.
‘The Dubreuilhs are coming over early to give me a hand.’
‘Why wait for them?’ he said, picking up a hammer.
Paula put her hand on his arm. ‘Aren’t you going to do any work?’ she asked.
‘Not tonight.’
‘But you say that every night. You haven’t written a thing for more than a year now.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I feel like writing now, and that’s what counts.’
‘That newspaper of yours takes up too much of your time; just look at how late you get home. Besides, I’m sure you haven’t eaten a thing since noon. Aren’t you hungry?’
‘No, not now.’
‘Aren’t you even tired?’
‘Not at all.’
Those searching eyes of hers, so constantly devouring him with solicitude, made him feel like an unwieldy and fragile treasure. And it was that feeling which wearied him. He stepped up on the stool and with light, careful blows – the house had long since passed its youth – began driving a nail into the beam.
‘I can even tell you what I’m going to write,’ he said. ‘A light novel.’
‘What do you mean?’ Paula asked, her voice suddenly uneasy.
‘Exactly what I said. I feel like writing a light novel.’
Given even the slightest encouragement, he would have made up the story then and there, would have enjoyed thinking it out loud. But Paula was looking at him so intensely that he kept quiet.
‘Hand me that big bunch of mistletoe,’ he said instead.
Cautiously, he hung the green ball, studded with small white berry eyes, while Paula held out another nail to him. Yes, he thought, the war was really over. At least it was for him. This evening was going to be a real celebration. Peace would begin, everything would begin again – holidays, leisure trips, pleasure – maybe even happiness, but certainly freedom. He finished hanging the mistletoe, the holly, and the puffs of white cotton along the beam.
‘How does it look?’ he asked, stepping off the stool.
‘Perfect.’ She went over to the tree and straightened one of the candles. ‘If it’s no longer dangerous,’ she said quietly, ‘you’ll be going to Portugal now?’
‘Naturally.’
‘And you won’t do any work during the trip?’
‘I don’t suppose so.’
She stood nervously tapping one of the golden balls hanging from a branch of the tree, waiting for the words she had long been expecting.
‘I’m terribly sorry I can’t take you with me,’ he said finally.
‘You needn’t feel sorry,’ she said. ‘I know it’s not your fault. And anyhow, I feel less and less these days like traipsing about. What for?’ She smiled. ‘I’ll wait for you. Waiting, when you know what you’re waiting for, isn’t too bad.’
Henri felt like laughing aloud. What for? All those wonderful names – Lisbon, Oporto, Cintra, Coimbra – came alive in his mind. He didn’t even have to speak them to feel happy; it was enough to say to himself, ‘I won’t be here any more; I’ll be somewhere else.’ Somewhere else! Those words were more wonderful than even the most wonderful names.
‘Aren’t you going to get dressed?’ he asked.
‘I’m going,’ she said.
Paula climbed the stairway to the bedroom and Henri went over to the table. Suddenly he realized that he had been hungry. But he knew that whenever he admitted it a worried look would come over Paula’s face. He spread himself some pâté on a slice of bread and bit into it. Resolutely he told himself, ‘As soon as I get back from Portugal, I’ll move to a hotel. What a wonderful feeling it will be to return at night to a room where no one is waiting for you!’ Even when he was still in love with Paula, he had always insisted on having his own private four walls. But in ’39 and ’40, while he was in the army, Paula had had constant nightmares about falling dead on his horribly mutilated body, and when at last he was returned to her, how could he possibly refuse her anything? And then, what with the curfew, the arrangement turned out to be rather convenient, after all. ‘You can leave whenever you like,’ she would say. But up to now he hadn’t been able to. He took a bottle and twisted a corkscrew into the squeaking cork. Paula would get used to doing without him in less than a month. And if she didn’t, it would be just too damn bad! France was no longer a prison, the borders were opening up again, and life shouldn’t be a prison either. Four years of austerity, four years of working only for others – that was a lot, that was too much. It was time now for him to think a little about himself. And for that, he had to be alone, alone and free. It wouldn’t be easy to find himself again after four years; there were so many things that had to be clarified in his mind. What for instance? Well, he wasn’t quite sure yet, but there, in Portugal, strolling through the narrow streets which smelled of oil, he would try to bring things into focus. Again he felt his heart leap. The sky would be blue, laundry would be airing at open windows; his hands in his pockets, he would wander about as a tourist among people whose language he didn’t speak and whose troubles didn’t concern him.
He would let himself live, would feel himself living, and perhaps that alone would be enough to make everything come clear.
Paula came down the stairs with soft, silken steps. ‘You uncorked all the bottles!’ she exclaimed. ‘That was sweet of you.’
‘You’re so positively dedicated to violet!’ he said, smiling.
‘But you adore violet!’ she said.
He had been adoring violet for the past ten years; ten years was a long time.
‘You don’t like this dress?’ Paula asked.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said hastily. ‘It’s very pretty. I just thought that there were some other colours which might become you. Green, for example,’ he ventured, picking the first colour that came to mind.
She looked at herself in one of the mirrors. ‘Green?’ she said, and there was bewilderment in her voice. ‘You really think I’d look well in green?’
It was all so useless, he told himself. In green or yellow he would never again see in her the woman who, that day ten years earlier, he had desired so much when she had nonchalantly held out her long violet gloves to him.
Henri smiled at her gently. ‘Dance with me,’ he said.
‘Yes, let’s dance,’ she replied in a voice so ardent that it made him freeze up. Their life together had been so dismal during the past year that Paula herself had seemed to be losing her taste for it. But at the beginning of September, she changed abruptly; now, in her every word, every kiss, every look, there was a passionate quivering. When he took her in his arms she moved herself hard against him, murmuring, ‘Do you remember the first time we danced together?’
‘Yes, at the Pagoda. You told me I danced very badly.’
‘That was the day I took you to the Musée Grévin. You did not know about it. You did not know about anything,’ she said tenderly. She pressed her forehead against his cheek. ‘I can see us the way we were then.’
And so could he. They had stood together on a pedestal in the middle of the Palais des Mirages and everywhere around them they had seen themselves endlessly multiplied in a forest of mirrored columns. Tell me I’m the most beautiful of all women … You’re the most beautiful of all women … And you’ll be the most glorious man in the world …
Now he turned his eyes towards one of the large mirrors. Their entwined dancing bodies were infinitely repeated alongside an endless row of Christmas trees, and Paula was smiling at him blissfully. Didn’t she realize, he asked himself, that they were no longer the same couple?
‘Someone just knocked,’ Henri said, and he rushed to the door. It was the Dubreuilhs, heavily laden with shopping bags and baskets. Anne held a bunch of roses in her arms, and slung over Dubreuilh’s shoulder were huge bunches of red pimentos. Nadine followed them in, a sullen look on her face.
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Did you hear the news? The air force was able to deliver at last.’
‘Yes, a thousand planes!’
‘They wiped them out.’
‘It’s all over.’
Dubreuilh dumped the load of red fruit on the couch. ‘Here’s something to decorate your little brothel.’
‘Thanks,’ Paula said coolly. It annoyed her when Dubreuilh called her studio a brothel – because of all the mirrors and those red draperies, he said.
He surveyed the room. ‘The centre beam is the only place for them; they’ll look a lot better up there than that mistletoe.’
‘I like the mistletoe,’ Paula said firmly.
‘Mistletoe is stupid; it’s round, it’s traditional. And moreover it’s a parasite.’
‘Why not string the pimentos along the railing at the head of the stairs,’ Anne suggested.
‘It would look much better up here,’ Dubreuilh replied.
‘I’m sticking to my holly and my mistletoe,’ Paula insisted.
‘All right, all right, it’s your home,’ Dubreuilh conceded. He beckoned to Nadine. ‘Come and help me,’ he said.
Anne unpacked a pork pâté, butter, cheese, cakes. ‘And this is for the punch,’ she said, setting two bottles of rum on the table. She placed a package in Paula’s hands. ‘Here, that’s your present. And here’s something for you,’ she said, handing Henri a clay pipe, the bowl shaped like a bird’s claw clutching a small egg. It was the same kind of pipe that Louis used to smoke fifteen years before.
‘Remarkable,’ said Henri. ‘How did you ever guess that I’ve been wanting a pipe like this for the past fifteen years?’
‘Simple,’ said Anne. ‘You told me.’
‘Two pounds of tea!’ Paula exclaimed. ‘You’ve saved my life! And does it smell good! Real tea!’
Henri began cutting slices of bread which Anne smeared with butter and Paula with the pork pâté. At the same time, Paula kept an anxious eye on Dubreuilh, who was hammering nails into the railing with heavy blows.
‘Do you know what’s missing here?’ he cried out to Paula. ‘A big crystal chandelier. I’ll dig one up for you.’
‘Don’t bother. I don’t want one.’
Dubreuilh finished hanging the clusters of pimentos and came down the stairs.
‘Not bad!’ he said, examining his work with a critical eye. He went over to the table and opened a small bag of spices; for years, on the slightest excuse, he had been concocting that same punch, the recipe for which he had learned in Haiti. Leaning against the railing, Nadine was chewing one of the pimentos; at eighteen, in spite of her experiences in the various French and American beds, she still seemed in the middle of the awkward age.