The Mandarins

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.