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- Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
No one can keep up with Pierre Niox, the speediest antiques dealer in Paris, although not necessarily the most competent. As he dashes about at a dizzying pace, his impatience becomes too much to bear for those around him; his manservant, his only friend and even his cat abandon him. He begins to find that while he is racing through life, it is passing him by. However, when he falls in love with the languid, unpunctual Hedwige, the man in a hurry has to learn how to slow down. This feverish classic by one of the modern masters of French prose is a witty and touching parable for our busy times.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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PAUL MORAND
THE MAN IN A HURRY
Translated from the French by Euan Cameron
PUSHKIN PRESS LONDON
CONTENTS
THE MAN IN A HURRY
To Hélène Morand
… but does one dedicate a book
to the person to whom one dedicated one’s life?
P.M.
PART ONE
A Cracking Pace
CHAPTER I
AT THE POINT at which the road reached the top of the slope and was about to dip down on the other side again, the man jumped out of the taxi without waiting for the driver to brake. He went into one of those suburban taverns where in the summer you can have lunch with a view and where you can dine in the cool of the evening. With an anxious step, he charged down the path lined with box hedges and rushed over to the terrace. There was such a contrast between the sweltering, glare-filled outskirts of the city and the still, stony silence of this panorama that he stopped in his tracks. Paris fanned out beneath him; an incline plunged towards the Seine, hemmed in by the hills of Clamart and the heights of the Sénart forest. The eye could look down from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges as far as Kremlin-Bicêtre. He took a seat at a metal table and clapped his hands. Twice, he glanced at his watch, as if it were a friend. Nobody chose to bring him a drink. Finally, a waiter in his seventies whose rheumatism was aggravated by working at night came to wipe the table with a duster. Why, since he had achieved his aim, did the visitor appear disconcerted?
The sun was still lighting up the sky, while below, darkness had already fallen; driven from the heavens by sudden flurries of light, rather like an actor unable to make up his mind whether to leave the stage, at nine o’clock the sun was lingering in the summer dusk, drowned in a rosy mist.
The customer without a drink cast his eye over the surrounding tables; all around him people were dining; at that time of the year refugees (everyone was exclaiming rapturously in Central European languages) had come to graft themselves onto the old Parisian clientele of lovers, boozy wedding parties and entertainers for whom Sceaux and Robinson were a rustic extension of Montparnasse.
The man kept turning around, as though he were being followed; twice he looked to see whether his watch had anything new to tell him. He had scarcely been sitting down for more than a minute or two than he clapped his hands again, prodded the hobbling, elderly waiter, and insisted on having something to drink.
Behind the lady at the bar, who was totting up numbers, a whole array of aperitifs was displayed. The visitor gazed at the cordials and coloured alcoholic drinks with melancholy, with longing, with love. His legs began to quiver; his knees knocked together; he clenched his fists, did his best to resist, sighed, and all of a sudden yielded to his desire, abruptly giving way to his impulse, and dashed over to the shelf; his arm brushed against the tiered cake that was the barmaid’s hairdo, he snatched a bottle of quinquina at random, slipped a finger into the handle of a beer mug as he passed the trolley, having also grabbed a soda siphon with the other hand, hopped down the two steps and collapsed into his chair. After having poured the soda water and the Dubonnet into his beer mug—simultaneously, to save time—he gulped it all down.
Only then did he realize that he had never been thirsty.
“May I, monsieur, at your table be seated?”
The customer looked the newcomer up and down.
“Is it to sketch a portrait of me? No one has ever been able to draw me, I warn you; I don’t keep still.”
“Allow me to introduce myself: Doctor Zachary Regencrantz, from Jena. Here is my card. Yours, please? Your behaviour has greatly interested me, Monsieur… Monsieur Pierre Niox. I have been observing you ever since you entered the restaurant. Fascinating! My attention was drawn by your extremely sudden appearance on the terrace. I saw the way you bounded in! Your impetuous movements struck me, a specialist in the study of impulsive movement and the anatomy of reflexes, as most unusual and not at all in keeping with their aim. They had originality and even beauty. Rather like a panther leaping on a mosquito. Ha! Ha! Ha!”
The doctor held forth in measured tones, without beating about the bush, proceeding as though on tiptoes in a language which he was clearly more accustomed to reading than speaking; he lost his balance over the slippery syntax and recovered as best he could.
“So far nothing abnormal, my dear monsieur. I classified you straight away among the paroxysmal-needing-to-satisfy-himself-quickly-subjects, having initially imagined that you dashed in so that you could shorten the distance that separated you from the moment at which you could drink, since thirst seemed to be the Mittelpunkt, the core of your activity. But this new incident—one that would readily require clinical observation and even perhaps a substantial monograph—is that having satisfied an apparently burning desire, but which in reality was not burning, you have not so much as touched your glass, as it were.”
Pierre scrutinized this Regencrantz with the friendliness one feels for someone who talks to you about yourself, even though in theory he did not care for people touching him or murmuring in his ear, but he was used to Jews who, when they speak to you, always look as though they are buying something or telling you a secret. Pierre felt himself being stared at intently by a pair of blue eyes rimmed with gold; the eyes of a 100-year-old man in the sallow face of a skier. Very white teeth shone from skin bronzed by altitude; the doctor’s tan was not as well preserved as it had been and was starting to turn green in patches. A nose like a bishop’s crosier protruded between two cheeks that at the most serious moments always looked as though they were about to burst out laughing. Regencrantz scratched his skull, which was covered with a pale moss that was all the more unusual because the hair on his head had taken refuge in his ears and his nostrils.
“Sit yourself down, doctor. I’m going to give you a consultation. I am neither worried, nor paroxysmal, nor impulsive, nor overwrought. I am perfectly healthy.”
“We shall see.”
“Were I on my own, I would feel marvellous; but there are other people.”
“Halt! All my patients say the same thing: ‘Doctor, I’m a victim…’”
“I’m not a victim, I’m a martyr.”
“Ah, there we are. You can tell me what it is that is bothering you.”
“My misfortune is to be precise. My life is spent waiting. You see, this evening I was meant to meet a friend here. Where is he? He is where everyone is: elsewhere.”
“One question I shall ask you: are you enthusiastic?”
“No. Normally quite indifferent, and even apathetic.”
“Do you believe in the afterlife? Do you talk with God?”
“I reckon that, having tricked me by bringing me into the world, it’s for Him to get in touch first.”
“And do you believe in progress?”
“What do you take me for?”
“Is your restless activity of the metaphysical kind? I mean: polypragmosyne?”
“Don’t look for a moral cause, most honourable doctor, you won’t find anything. It is not because of any acquired wisdom that I move quickly, I do so instinctively. The only explanation is that I possess a fatal gift, as the romantics used to say: that of mobility. I am cursed with moving at a galloping pace in a universe that moves at a trot.”
“You are like the alchemists who used to see all the principles of the properties of the body in quicksilver. Have you always been so… impatient?”
“Me, impatient? But I’m so patient that I sometimes have convulsions as a result.”
“The expression gave me away. Can you say in French: ‘How long have people appeared slow to you?’”
“Always have done. Well, actually, no. I’m not really sure.”
“You imply that your subconscious”—the doctor laid stress on the word with a very Germanic relish for terminology—“prefers not to remember. You don’t know, but it knows and it has to speak out. If you would care to see me again, we shall collaborate on a methodical observation of your good self, which will lead us to throw some light on your nature.”
“But I’m not ill!”
“Who mentioned illness? I certainly don’t want to treat you. If you want to charge around like that, you’re perfectly entitled to.” (And with his hand the doctor imitated the throw of the javelin.) “I am simply trying to find out for myself, and I say once more that your case is interesting, that there is an original personality within you. The way you took flight, a moment ago, was admirable, and your agility and your lightness were exemplary. This is not a fatal gift in the least, I can assure you, it is a gift pure and simple.”
“You make me very happy, doctor.”
“My first diagnosis is that you are not living under a curse, as you say you are. No more than other men. You are actually rather better built, more athletic, and your reflexes, which are made of saltpetre, deserve my careful study. Call me from time to time, especially at moments of over-excitement, and we shall chat. Here is my address.”
“Wait, doctor, don’t go. This time you’re the one who’s in a hurry.”
“Very well. I’ll stay and listen to you. For myself, I have my entire life, when I am able, for organized leisure time.”
“Very well, then listen: my profession is that of an antique dealer; except on rare occasions, I never buy later than AD 1000. I am known for the Carolingian period. I have never sold anything later than thirteenth-century, unless it was a fake, and in that case one returns the money.”
“All that is a long time ago when people did not run as fast as you!”
“Yes. I said the same thing to myself last week, at Mount Athos, while inspecting a Byzantine ivory piece smoothed over by the centuries. All the same, one has to move quickly, with bric-a-brac as with everything else, and particularly in my area. Why? Because there’s a regular demand and a steady market for eighteenth-century objects, whereas with the Middle Ages it’s less reliable than the most active gold mine: I watch my customers rushing from Scythian art to Gandharan; six months later it’s Pre-Columbian that’s in vogue and Mycenaean that’s out of favour.”
“Might that not be the fault of young hotheads like you, Monsieur Dynamite?”
“No, it’s my customers’ fault. My clientele are as scarce as they are select. They’re difficult and anxious. They are made up of those spurious sages, those devotees who run museums, and the demanding newly rich. Who is more excitable than a collector of objects from the Middle Ages? He strides across the centuries as he would streams. Could anyone be more volatile in his moods? I’ve been dealing with that sort for fifteen years now…”
“Without adopting the required philosophy?”
“Philosophy has no more to do with resignation, doctor, than eloquence has with the art of saying nothing. On the contrary, it’s in so far as I’m a philosopher that I feel revolutionary.”
“You told me that you are fit and well?”
“What I told you was that I was strong and from good stock. We are all made up of the same atoms that move around at the same speed and yet no one manages to keep up with me. Some mistaken adjustment must have been made at my birth. Explain it if you can. I’m aware of a discrepancy between my own rhythm and that of my environment. One of the two has to give way, either I succumb or else I teach my contemporaries, who really do mope about like snails, to follow my pace. Ah! The slowcoaches!”
“A good thing you’re not a dictator. You’d be conducting a Blitzkrieg every day!”
“What can I do?”
“Improve yourself.”
“Why me? I have to put up with people, because my fellow citizens have retained, in this tormented century, the pace of a former age. I admire people: they seem to have time for everything, they move forward on a horizontal plane; as for me, I have the feeling I’m constantly falling, as in dreams; when I was born, I fell from a roof and I could see all the floors going by and the ground getting dreadfully closer. I reckon speed is the modern form of sluggishness and I know that I’m obeying the true momentum of the universe and that I’m the only person who can feel that I’m obeying it. Why change? Why would I change, since it’s not my mistake?”
“With mental dramas there are never any exterior causes.”
“Tell me straight away that I’m mad. You’ve already treated me as if I were a case of paroxysm, doctor! I’m very upset.”
“Please don’t paint such a bleak picture, dear Monsieur Niox. I spoke not of tragedy, but drama, for drama has its comical side.”
“So I’m a clown?”
“Our initial relationship this evening stems from a scene that can be characterized as basically comical. Your taking flight, so out of proportion to your supposed thirst, would have made anyone laugh. (You yourself were compelled to laugh.) But nevertheless, I think I may be permitted to look beyond this superficial comedy.”
“The martyr?”
“No. But a personality who has been affected as far as sexual attraction is concerned, who has been badly bruised, who is probably courageous and quite capable of playing the hero in some modern adventure or other. Along with the word ‘drama’, I used the adjective ‘mental’. I would have done better to use the word ‘spiritual’, yes, spiritual drama, ein seelisches Drama. You are entitled to believe that, had you simply gulped down your aperitif like a raw egg, I would not have spoken to you. Gluttony can be of no interest to me, it should be classified under hysteria; thirst, a primitive impulse, would have justified your haste and would thus have removed its grandeur and its importance. I would have expelled you from the pathology amid general indifference. It is only in proportion to the pointlessness of your actions and insofar as the spirit within you will do its best to shake up matter, that you deserve to be considered as a work of art or feature in the clinician’s notebook, which often amounts to the same thing when it is a question of achieving the truth. But whatever the motivation of your behaviour, you are a truly veritable sphinx as far as I am concerned. You state that there is a conflict between you and the others? Very well. Who is right? Whom should I blame and whom should I absolve? In this debate I wish to make a judgement. Paris, an ancien régime city, is an excellent climacteric resort for the observation of human beings, for, like all the old capitals, it is the refuge of oppressed sensibilities, of those who ignore rules and of the cripples of the present age. Why does Paris have such a great reputation among us? Because it is a city of nervous upheaval and moral tumult. Here, monsieur, we must assert the profundity of this city that is supposed to be superficial and that has invented so many vices and so many styles. I wish to take advantage of my stay in Paris, while awaiting my transit visa for New York. I am noting things down. Later, I transfer them to index cards. Who knows whether I am not already able to recognize the symptoms of a new and, to us Germans, undiscovered passion?”
“Are you still talking about me?”
“Possibly.”
“Then you will be disappointed, doctor. Just content yourself with this evening’s episode.”
“I want to do better.”
“My autopsy?” asked Pierre with a laugh.
“Ha! Ha! Ha! Your autopsy! Ha! Ha! You are laughing, Monsieur Niox. Sie gehen zu schnell! You are going too fast!”
Regencrantz got to his feet.
“Man is a magnetic needle that is never still,” said Pierre.
“Except at the pole…”
“Yes, indeed! Amid the polar ice, in death… Death which is nothing but a word! I drink to our life, doctor!”
“Prosit!”
CHAPTER II
CONFINED TO PARIS all afternoon, Pierre had been longing for fresh air, and being eager to sample the cool of the evening, he was consumed with the desire to go up to the woods at Robinson. But now that Regencrantz had left him, all he could think of was sliding downhill again towards his bed, like a river; he tumbled down the slope at full speed so that he could sleep.
The concierge just has time to catch him as he speeds by and to hand him a message from Placide.
“Monsieur Niox, from your colleague. It’s urgent.”
Pierre tears open the letter in the lift and reads it between floors: “Latest development,” writes Placide, “the house that was not for sale is for sale; but there’s not a moment to lose. Phone me this evening when you get home.”
“Not a moment to lose!” Pierre exclaims. “Marvellous! When do we leave?”
He rings Placide, who agrees to come along with him. Tomorrow morning at six o’clock, it’s settled, they will both be on the road.
In bed, Pierre manages to fold himself in three in such a way that even when he is lying still he seems to be making a perilous plunge. He concentrates, then relaxes into a soliloquy: “Pierre, think hard before you fall asleep and before waking up and finding out you’re a landlord. Pierre, you’re going to tie yourself down! You’re taking root. You’re settling down. You’re becoming stable! Your agile legs are going to bind together like those of a stone god! Your rushing stream will end up in a lake, in a bog. Is it possible? You, owning a house! You should know that there are snails that die crushed by their own shells! Are you going to swap the turmoil of a free man for the turmoil of a home owner? Think carefully while it’s still dark before collapsing into a deep sleep. Up till now, what do you own? Treasures that are in any case not yours and which would fit into a single suitcase. You are one of those men who don’t have any excess baggage.
“Here, in three lines, is the inventory of your belongings:
“A game of chess made of rock crystal, said to be from the time of Charlemagne (ninth-century), deposited in a bank in Buenos Aires. That’s the large piece.
“A Byzantine vase (sixth-century) with a winged sparrow hawk mounting, in bond in New York.
“An illustrated manuscript known as the Ratisbon Gospel (1025), on gold and violet parchment, on loan to the Bodleian exhibition.
“A Greek paten (Mount Athos, sixth-century) in safe custody at Spink’s of London.
“Six gold Théodebert sols, Merovingian coins (sixth-century).
“A Carolingian comb in the shape of two confronting birds of prey, bought in Brussels three days ago.
“A small golden bull on a pearl necklace, excavations from the valley of the Indus (fifth-century BC).
“These latter two pieces are in Paris, on your bed, the bed on which you will fall asleep if this continues because inventories are the best soporifics. When one possesses such compact wealth in such a minimal amount, it’s pointless to encumber yourself with a house.”
“Excuse me,” Pierre says to himself, “I also have four Frankish sarcophagi, three Syrian twisting capitals, a porphyry Lombard armchair. (A snore.) And a black-andwhite mosaic waiting for me in a garage in Antioch. These scattered pieces that risk being lost justify the purchase of a house. (Another snore.) Furthermore, a Roman cloister is not a house, it’s more a work of art than a house. No, it’s not a basilica, I’m exaggerating because I’m beginning to feel sleepy… It’s a cloister. Let’s think more slowly. But when you think slowly, you fall asleep. How boring it is to sleep!”
Pierre switches on the light again.
“I like counting the hours of the night: if I sleep I’m robbed of these precious hours. Sleep is unjustifiable.”
Pierre falls asleep; not for long: the thought of his future acquisition wakes him up after ten minutes.
“This cloister really does exist and I’m soon going to take possession of it, unless the owner asks me to pay too much. All I have are the banknotes I earned yesterday; I’ll take the whole wad just in case; perhaps it will be enough.”
Pierre pictures himself three weeks ago on a flight from Marseille to Salonica, about to embark for Mount Athos and go to the cloister of Xeropotamos where the priests offered him the paten that is now part of his inventory. He had left Marignane at dawn and was flying over the Var. For a moment, the plane was hedge-hopping over the Maures hills. To his right, the Îles d’Hyères stretched out, to his left, the Alps. Beneath Pierre’s feet, less than fifty metres beneath him, amid the tangled mass of trees, far from any roads and surrounded by scrub, he remembered perfectly having spotted a clearing; in the middle of this clearing, like a reliquary lying on green velvet, he had noticed, buried amid the rosemary bushes, a most exquisite Romanesque chapel, every detail of which his hawk’s eyes immediately registered. “I have an excellent visual memory,” Pierre often used to say; “It’s the memory idiots have, but I have it; or rather: and I have it.”
Primitive art is rarely exquisite; that is precisely what made him fall in love with his cloister. In the rising sunlight, this miniature chapel appeared brand new and as though it had barely left the donor’s pocket. A thousand years had passed over it without it getting at all grubby; on the contrary, the stone looked as though it had been washed by the dawn. Between the blades of the propeller that drew him onwards, Pierre could make out every detail of the small stone steeple; beneath the undercarriage, the bell-tower and its lantern, like a cow with its calf, the thick walls and the apse that was rounder than a crinoline, passed by. “A manure cart was coming out of the porch, from which I concluded, even before the wheels of the monoplane had robbed me of my discovery, that the chapel was deconsecrated, that farmers used it, and that they might possibly relinquish it were I to offer to buy it. At that decisive moment, the last object to register on my retina was an ancient basin, in the middle of the courtyard, which I thought might serve as a drinking trough.
“Very well, I did what Lindbergh did when prospecting the Mayan temples that overlook the Guatemalan rainforest: I jotted down a rough sketch on my knees, with reference points and information provided by the pilot. The trees beneath us were the Dom forest; the beach to our right was Le Lavandou; the Provençal villas on the hillside, Bormes.” On arriving at Brindisi two hours later, during a miserable wait (journeys by plane are spent waiting!) Pierre had dispatched a telegram to Placide. The reply reached him in Athens:
“Chartreuse du Mas Vieux, eleventh-century. Stop. Not for sale. Sorry.” And now, here was the Mas Vieux for sale!
Pierre goes to sleep so as to prepare himself the better for his next raid. It’s not so much a rest as a gathering of momentum. This man who is unable to keep still is not even grateful to the little cloister lost in the depths of the Var for having waited 1,000 years for him.
Placide has one cardinal virtue: punctuality. Here he is now with Pierre on the RN6, at six o’clock in the morning, sitting in a convertible which Pierre is driving at breakneck speed. Orly airport tilts back, Ris-Orangis rears up, Melun subsides, Fontainebleau throws open its forest to allow them to pass through; the mileposts flash past them, the advertising hoardings make them offers, the bends hug them, the downhill slopes prepare an easy incline for them, the uphill ones flatten out gently beneath their wheels, Sens cathedral proffers its two towers to them, Joigny calls to them on their way: “Lots to see in Auxerre!” and Auxerre, which they stride through like Gargantuas, sends them off to Saulieu; they swallow up Dijon and they bolt through Lyon on their flying jaunt.
Placide chats away like a cantankerous magpie. Whereas Pierre has spent his thirty-five years getting steamed up, his colleague, rival and friend has spent twenty-eight doing very little. Pierre’s dark hair blows in the wind, whereas Placide is bald. Pierre thinks straight, sees straight, walks straight; Placide, who has become short-sighted and stooped through reading, moves in zigzags: he has small, shaky feet, puzzled hands and a mischievous face. Pierre has an instinct for things and Placide is highly erudite. Pierre became involved in Roman art at the age that Placide was leaving the École des Chartes.1 Pierre drives and Placide is driven.
“I’m looking forward with much impatience to our meeting this evening,” says Placide. “The owner of the chapel, Monsieur de Boisrosé (armorial bearing of Santo Domingo), is an elderly Creole preoccupied with his health and self-preservation; he’s so slow he’s unable to complete his sentences; neither are you, you’re so quick. It will be a treat for me to see you together.”
“So convey to me still further what you know of this matter, my dear.”
Placide speaks as Madame de Sévigné writes, and Pierre, who is a tease, replies in the same vein, when he is in a good mood.
“We were disinclined to sell, but the local maidservant appears to have had her say.”
“I should be extremely happy to cast my eyes over her, this girl, however fearful she may be.”
Placide shrugs his shoulders:
“She is. It will teach you to make fun of me.”
With his little finger in the air, Pierre, out of pique, pretends to take a pinch from an imaginary snuffbox.
“Well, no actually. The maidservant is extremely pretty and you will be delighted to make her acquaintance,” Placide retorts. “But I am fearfully anxious that M. de Boisrosé may change his mind,” he adds treacherously, thinking solely of spoiling his friend’s pleasure.
“The main basis upon which I build my hopes is the care they have taken to call us by telegram, even though the word telegram sounds offensive here!”
And Pierre laughs, pressing his foot flat on the accelerator.
“Can we not stop soon? I’m so hungry,” Placide sighs.
“It’s impossible if we want to be in the Var by this evening. I fully intend to become the owner before dinner! When I do something foolish, I like to plunge in head first.”
Placide sighs in desperation:
“You think of yourself as punctual,” he says, “but you’re missing what’s important, which is the punctuality of the stomach.”
“It’s because I need you to be light, so that we can refuel en route.”
Placide adopts a tight-lipped expression:
“I had thought, dear friend, that you were taking me along as an expert in Roman art and not as the speedster’s mechanic. What a mad obsession not to stop at a petrol station!”
“Ah no! That’s not all. The woman in a nurse’s blouse, with her big red stick, irritates me; she’s a chatterbox and never has any change. The petrol pipe she brandishes is always too long or too short; it’s also ridiculously narrow; the air goes into the tank while the petrol spills on the ground. It’s stupid! The pipes are always too narrow, whether it’s a pipe that drains out, a pipe that pumps in water or the neck of a bottle, a human larynx, or an oesophagus tube. Come on, get a move on, there’s not a drop left in the tank.”
“You’re going to make me reach out over the hood at a hundred kilometres an hour and risk breaking my neck… It’s cruel and dangerous. Slow down, for goodness’ sake, slow down!” yells Placide.
“Me! Slow down!”
“My cap!”
“So, are you sitting in the dickey-seat? Fine. Now, listen to what you have to do: the fifty-litre can is under the back seat. Found it? Fine. I’m watching you in the rear-view mirror: take the funnel. Have you got it? That’s perfect! So, third step: lean out over the right-hand side of the car. You’re right’s not on your left! Don’t fall out! Unscrew the cap. No, of course there’s no danger! Just hold on with your foot and cling on with your left hand while you’re in space… Well done! You see, Placide, saving ten minutes is child’s play!”
Placide crawled back to his seat with some difficulty and sat down again beside Pierre, his face white from fear and the wind, his ears as red as a clown’s.
CHAPTER III
“FROM HERE ON, the road is no longer suitable for cars,” said Placide. “The gravel crumbles beneath the wheels and if we go any further we’ll risk thousands of punctures.”
They step down and stride over the roots of a carob tree laid bare by the rain. The pitted track has become a stream. Pierre runs, followed by Placide who, in the woods, with his large head framed by a blond beard, looks like one of Snow White’s dwarfs, though without their lightness of foot.
“I feel as though I’m in a Turkish bath. I’m sweating like an alcarraza.”
“Onwards!” yells Pierre.
“Let me stop for a second.”
“Must one stop over so minor a matter, Marquise? Onwards!”
The cork oaks, stripped to a man’s height of their outer layers, display the red innards of their robust bark. Their cracked crusts, with their spongy slabs rounded like tiles, are piled up at crossroads.
“A forest that’s ripe for a fire. All you need is a match,” hints Placide, annoyed at having to do up his buttons again as he runs.
“If my house burns down, so much the better! It’s unusual for a landlord to have a Wagnerian death.”
The harbour at Hyères rises up to meet them through the pine grove. Lizards rush out, stopping right in front of them, on slabs of pink sandstone. A flock of red partridges, the same colour as the sandstone and the cork, cross over the stream and retreat into the oleander bushes that have reverted to the wild. Lizards and partridges are the only recognizable creatures encountered during the first thirty minutes of their climb, spent stepping over heather, laburnum and clumps of rosemary.
“Let’s keep Gratteloup hill to our right. We’re on the right track, assuming there is a track,” said Placide. “I remember noticing those veins of white marble in the sandstone.”
Small clouds scurry above them, floating over the lighthouse and dissolving far away in the sea mist. The woods scramble across the hilltops, those fiery, twisted, miserable woods of the Midi, those small forests that never grow to their full height, but repay their sparse nourishment with balsam and perfume. Far below, between the trunks of the trees, the golden curve of a beach can be seen: it is Le Lavandou, and behind it lies Cap Bénat with its scrubland; in the background are the Îles d’Hyères, which the setting sun is lulling to sleep in a crimson light fringed with violet.
“Oh! How beautiful it is!” Pierre cries out. “My God, it’s beautiful. Here’s my hermitage, I recognize it. Here are the two cypress trees marking the entrance, on either side of the cart track. My plane flew over this precise point!” he exclaims in his enthusiasm.
Apart from a ring of agaves and prickly pears, the building, constructed of such a brightly coloured stone that it looks as though it were new, stops beside a drop. It clings to the slope; it cleaves to some splendid thick rows of Aleppo pines in one of those luminous landscapes that rarely experience the splatter of rainfall. The olive trees have taken it upon themselves to settle around the oil mill; they display their greying leaves crowned with tender green shoots at a time of the year when the young, bitter olive has not yet turned a shade of violet. The cicadas can be heard… A Galilean peace.
Pierre and Placide enter a courtyard that has the stench of that quiet, silent existence of those farms where the labour takes place in the fields. An alcove bereaved of its saint. A black and white cat, paws folded, sleeps on the sill of one of the small columned arches that pierce the walls of the ancient chapel. For the old mas has its own very primitive Romanesque chapel, and also its leper house, which has been turned into a stable. Farmers have clumsily hacked out doors and windows from these thick eleventh-century walls that are so sparing of light and access. The mistral has torn off the shutters that have fallen onto the dry grass and which nobody has picked up. Nothing that the later centuries have added to the original building, which was designed to be low, compact and smooth as a pebble, has withstood the elements. On the contrary, everything that is ten centuries old appears new, not least the layout of the stones that are greenish-grey and flecked with silvery mica like those piedras de plata in the Andes that the conquistadors mention. The drinking trough is a sarcophagus in which the profile of the abbot can still be seen, an African abbot perhaps, thick-lipped, with negroid features. The bell-tower has lost its bell; it stands above a roof bereft of all its colour due to the sun, with the ribs of the tiles eaten away by yellow lichen: tiles that have been fired and refired and which sound hollow when pecked at by the beaks of the white doves, turned pink in the setting sun.
“It’s the lair of the owl and the nanny goat’s palace!”
They mop their brows with their ties and rest on a bench which gets so hot at midday that no one can sit on it, a bench that retains its heat all night long.
In the darkness, through the open door of the former leper house, the stable can be seen, and in the shade, a cow swinging her tail as though it were a fly-swatter. At their feet lie a demijohn corseted in rust and an old saucepan full of holes, once used for the chickens. Along the wall, close to the door of the chapel, beneath a thick-shaped, squat arcature with a full tympanum, stands one of those carts that are used in poor countries. It is tiny, like all those ploughing tools in the South of France which, compared to the equipment used in the North, would look like toys were it not for the fact that, worn, scratched and chipped by flint stones as they are, they reveal how much hardship and effort was involved.
“I’m madly happy!”
Pierre is already laying an owner’s hand over the sandstone that copper sulphate has turned green in places. There’s a surprising silence in this courtyard, where the only sound comes from the water of the fountain.
“And what a fountain! Porphyry from Egypt. Look at the Greek Cross.”
Their voices echo. An invisible dog barks. From a low door a woman comes out to meet them. She’s a stocky peasant with hair made frizzy in places by a perm several months old, accentuating her Phoenician features. Joints made of steel, bare legs, a working woman’s hips, a powerful neck leading down to firm, gypsy breasts. No thighs, but-tocks that begin at the back of her knees, and feet that are planted firmly on the ground and attached to her legs by large, rustic limbs, in pure Mediterranean style.
She had been expecting them, for she had dressed up: a very clean yellow shawl and some lipstick.
They shake hands.
“Did you receive my reply to your telegram?” asked Placide.
“Yes, yes indeed.”
“Is Monsieur de Boisrosé in?”
“He’s in, of course, but… he’s tired.”
“Well, he must rest, good God,” said Placide in placatory manner; “we shall see him later.”
“I repeat, he’s very tired. Don’t you follow me?”
“Not very well. Is he asleep?”
“He’s doing more than sleeping, the poor fellow, he’s fainted.”
It’s not easy to extract much from this Provençal woman who is on her guard. She sizes Pierre up, she sits in judgement. She has been waiting for these visitors too intently to divulge matters all at once.
“A fainting fit?” says Pierre anxiously.
“He’s been coughing now for some days, and he has a stitch in his side that makes him double up.”
“Pleurisy, his heart must have given out on him,” says Pierre.
“His heart was thumping away last night! It sounded like the old motor in the well. Monsieur was having too much fun working!”
Pierre and Placide glance at one another: “Have we arrived too late?” Cow-like, the woman reads their minds easily. Naively, she forgets herself and replies aloud:
“He’s already lost his mind four times in two days, the poor fellow. But he won’t pass away without having chatted with you.”
“Is he on his own?”
“Do you think I’d leave him! The lawyer, Maître Caressa, is keeping him company. Come in. I’ll go and warn him.”
She is no longer speaking like a maid, but as the mistress of the Mas Vieux, with the authority of a proprietor. One can sense that for years this scrupulous spider has spun her web here. She loses no time, certain that death will promptly reward her patience. Her future as a careful, prudent girl is at stake at this moment. She has worked long and hard preparing for this and the machine is set and running.
The two Parisians walk into the main room while she rushes to the bedroom. They look down and smell the tiled floor, brightly polished with linseed oil, and they look up at the old rafters of the house laid bare by the plasterwork; the rotten beams and planks of wood, the corner posts, as well as the crossbars and struts, the whole framework of the room consists of ancient joists riddled with woodworm in which cheese-mites dwell, those grubs that inhabit olive trees and that cause sawdust to fall on you when you step too heavily. The room has two shades: milky, whitewashed walls and tables blackened by smoke and the stain of oil used at meals. The soberness of an orthodox cloister; and the railway timetable for Sud-Provence for an icon.
Pierre nudges Placide’s elbow and points to a fireplace with a rounded hood and small columns supported by cushions filled with leaves.
“To think that I’ll be able to make a fire in a real Roman fireplace! A Roman fire!”
And, indicating a heap of heather roots, pine needles and cones:
“Here, you won’t be able to criticize me any more for pouring petrol on the wood to make it burn quicker! The fire will catch alight all on its own with these olive twigs. Have you ever seen olive wood burn, Placide? It’s full of blue and green glimmers, like rum punch.”
The beaded bamboo curtain quivered: a man appeared.
“Gentlemen, I have the great honour. I am the lawyer, Maître Caressa,” he said solemnly. “My client has come to his senses.”
“Ah, is he better?” said Pierre.
“No. He won’t see the sunrise, unfortunately.” The doctor was quite clear. “Monsieur de Boisrosé”, he affirmed, “will pass away during the night.”
The lawyer made as though he were tapping his heart, indicating how difficult his client’s breathing was, then, squeezing his throat, he pretended he was suffocating.
“Yet Monsieur de Boisrosé seemed to be in very good health?” Placide interrupted, very politely. “Might we know what it is that is sending him to the grave?”
“Chronic pleurisy that has become acute; he has had four attacks in a few days. And to think that this fine man of ancient lineage, gentlemen, and courtesy itself, wanted—and it was his own expression—‘to die without causing any fuss’!”
“May we still take our leave of him?” asked Placide as a matter of form. He was beginning to amuse himself at the sight of Pierre in convulsions.
The maid heard them as she came back into the room:
“Ah, monsieur, it’s as if he were losing his wits. Come and see him as quickly as possible.”
“Right away,” said Pierre, “let’s not waste any time.”
Maître Caius Caressa cast a lengthy glance at the maid and said nothing. He bore the ugliness of several generations with assurance. His height, his heavy black shoes, unique in a region that wore espadrilles, his black suit, his civil service hat that lay on the table, his sclerotic mulatto’s eyes that were a brighter amber than the glue of the fly-paper that hung from the ceiling—everything about him revealed a man who was wily and powerful. He looked like one of those effigies of princes dubbed “the Bad” by their subjects that can be seen on the back of disused coins.
Pierre and Placide, who were only familiar with a few roguish crooks from business consultancies on the Côte d’Azur who tossed words around, remained silent in the presence of this witness to a secret deed that smelt of conspiracy.
“Mademoiselle Hortense informed me. She told me that you would like to buy the Mas Vieux.”
“The sooner the better,” said Pierre.
“When your colleague came to see Monsieur de Boisrosé a month ago, the farm was not for sale. But as soon as my client became aware of the warnings from heaven, he wished to put his affairs in order. The Mas Vieux is a lovely piece of countryside.”
“The price?”
“A very reasonable and moderate price. It’s not on the road, of course, and there’s no pergola, but you will produce ten tons of cork oak a year, enough to supply the whole coastline as far as Bormes with corks, floats and soles. And two earthenware jars of oil a year.”
“And there’s water,” added the maid. “All the frogs throughout the summer are proof of that.”
“The price?” Pierre repeated.
The lawyer was not accustomed to these sudden stops and starts. His eyes flashed and then dimmed.
“You must understand the situation. Monsieur de Boisrosé is sixty-five years old. A former judge in Martinique, for twenty years he has been separated from his wife who lives in Saint-Germain with their three daughters. On the death of their father, they will inherit. However, Monsieur de Boisrosé would like to recognize the loyal service given to him over several years by Mademoiselle Hortense Pastorino. Not being able to bequeath the Mas Vieux to her, he wishes to sell it during his lifetime; as long as he goes on living. He is an indecisive man and it took the arrival of the priest for him to make up his mind.”
“I will pay in cash.”
“The woods are full of amanita, bolete, parasols. Do you eat mushrooms?”
“I only like ceps.”
“There are some here that are as fine as those at Sospel. But they need rain…”
“When are we going to sign?” said Pierre impatiently.
“… can you tell the difference between the poisonous and the edible amanita?”
“And you, Maître Caressa, can you tell the difference between a man who is in a hurry and a local village buyer?”
Pierre turned towards the maid, took her by the arm and led her over to the window.
Maître Caressa smiled at Placide and shrugged his shoulder.
“He’s a lively fellow, your friend.”
If the lawyer, who normally watched his words as carefully as one would watch over someone who was dying, had struck up a new conversation, it was because he wished to do so. He, too, was in a hurry to sign, but for selfish reasons he bided his time, exerting his renowned patience upon others. Out of the corner of his eyes he watched Pierre peering intently at the maid, while she was frowning and looked as though she were about to burst into tears from irritation and emotion. Her gaze was lowered and she was wringing her wrists like a bookbinder shuffling pages. She was actually crying. Then her face lit up.
“Do you like hunting?” the lawyer asked Placide. “There are hares here as big as mastiffs. And foxes. And squirrels. Squirrel is good to eat.”
“I only shoot with a bow,” Placide replied modestly.
Pierre and the maid rejoined them.
“It’s done. We’re in agreement.”
And in the way one says: “Sit down, the soufflé is ready now!” the lawyer added:
“Pleurisy doesn’t wait.”
Here they are now in Monsieur de Boisrosé’s bedroom. He had regained consciousness. His bony face, with its lined features, was sunk into the pillow. Spluttering, the sick man raised himself up as they entered and his head did its best to lift itself above the eiderdown, rather like the head of a Chinese torture victim trying to free himself from the cangue. Short of breath, his nose pinched, his hands wringing the sheet—everything pointed to a human being on his last legs. He recognized Placide, greeted him with old-world courtesy, said hello to Pierre and bid them sit down.
“Monsieur, all that remains is to sign,” said the lawyer.
“I am happy to sell the Mas Vieux while I live to whomsoever would like it,” the sick man, short of breath, whispered with difficulty. “I should nonetheless like to be sure…”
The lawyer, dry as a for sale notice, cut him short.
“To wit,” he began: “a personal property, seven rooms over a cellar, fifteen hectares planted with one hundred and twenty olive trees, one hundred and fifty almond trees and vines, two water tanks…”
“… sure that the money will be immediately…” continued M. de Boisrosé in a feeble voice.
“… sheepfold, chicken run…”
“… It’s very important…”
“… pine grove…”
“… paid to…”
“Don’t interrupt me, Monsieur de Boisrosé… Workshop, wash-house…’’
“My only demand, payment in cash…”
“Agreed,” replied Pierre.
“It’s because I want to recognize above all…”
“You’re talking too much, you’re exhausting yourself, and you’re preventing us from completing.”
“One more wish,” the dying man went on in a suddenly steady voice: “I put in the electricity myself; I need to explain to you, monsieur, how it works.”
“Ah, this electricity! He wore himself out installing it,” the maid groaned.
“We shall never get through everything. It’s getting dark. You oblige me to request that you keep silent, Monsieur de Boisrosé.”
“It’s horrible,” Pierre muttered to Placide.
