‘For me . . .’ she said again.
‘How you demean yourself! And you get such pleasure from doing it, such proud satisfaction . . .’
‘Oh, Madame Mimi!’ she begged as if she were a child. ‘Who can give me the courage I need? . . . It’s the only thing that can save him. I have to make his wife think that I’ve gone away with Ben; I have to make Harry believe it! She’ll go back to him then, she loves him; she couldn’t possibly allow such scandal and dishonour . . . They have a child. Alone or with me, Harry is nothing. But with her and her powerful family to support him, he could be saved.’
‘And what about you?’
‘I’ll come back here. Or I’ll go away somewhere. It hardly matters . . . It’s so easy to disappear in this city when no one cares about you. He won’t come looking for me. That’s the thing I find most painful. He loves me, but he won’t come looking for me. It’s like when you truly want to kill yourself and someone wrenches the gun away from you: you don’t put up a fight because, deep down, you’re afraid of death. And to Harry, I’m that wrench, a second chance to live, or death,’ she said, more quietly.
Madame Mimi nodded.
‘Yes, they could come to an arrangement. The case against him could be withdrawn. With a respectable family around him, a French name to back up his own, yes, I think that would be the best thing for Harry . . . I said for Harry, but for you . . .’
Ada didn’t reply. She had thrown herself down on the bed, exhausted. Madame Mimi looked at her, went and got a blanket and covered her with it. Then she sat down again. She had that visible impassiveness that comes with old age and which, though it seems uncaring, gives comfort without a word being spoken or a tear being shed: she was living proof of forgetfulness and the end of all things. Ada kept her eyes closed, but she wasn’t asleep; she was thinking.
30
When Harry left Ada that same evening, he realised it wasn’t late, so he could spend an hour with some friends who lived in the outskirts of Paris. They had been inviting him to come for some time. He’d had to turn down the dinner invitation but the party afterwards wouldn’t finish until four or five in the morning. He could be there by midnight. He set off.
He went into the house. It was a warm night and the servants told him everyone was in the garden. He didn’t wish to be announced and replied that he would find his hosts himself. A floodlight on the terrace lit up the small dance floor, but the grounds behind were dark.
He walked beneath the trees, hoping it would be cooler there. A few women and two men were sitting apart from the others. They were talking excitedly. Harry couldn’t hear what they were saying. He walked on quietly: he had the silent step of all the Sinners. His friends didn’t see him until he was quite close to them. One of them said ‘Hem!’ quite loudly, as you do when you want to warn indiscreet gossips. Everyone stopped talking.
Harry was not unduly bothered when he realised they were talking about him: he knew very well that his close friends were aware of his separation from Laurence and his affair with Ada. Their curiosity did not surprise him. He feared neither their judgment nor their harshness when the moment came to announce his second marriage: he lived in the world of the rich bourgeoisie where divorce and adultery were so common they shocked no one. He was even prepared for whispered jokes and sly allusions from one of the women who was there; nearly all of them had sought his ‘attentions’, both before and after his marriage. It was their silence that surprised him. Then one of the men called out in that artificially lively and ringing tone of voice used when you want to disguise your secret thoughts.
‘Where the devil have you been hiding? We were just talking about you. No one ever sees you any more.’
‘That,’ thought Harry, ‘is in case I hear someone say my name as I walk up to them.’
He felt mildly irritated. What did they want of him? Why couldn’t they leave him be? He stopped himself, thinking it was absurd to attach such importance to malicious gossip. But, in spite of himself, his voice sounded hesitant and upset as he replied, ‘Yes. I’ve had so much to do . . .’
Once again, silence. Every one of his words met with an attention and hostility that was barely perceptible, yet noticeable nevertheless. And, after he spoke, after making an effort to say something carefully chosen to be insignificant, the silence lasted a few seconds longer. A few seconds too long . . . like when you’re waiting for a stone to hit the bottom of a ravine in order to measure its depth. He felt as if he were separated from the others by an ever-growing abyss. Then everyone started talking and laughing at the same time.
‘Got lots of work on these days?’ someone asked.
Harry remembered that he hadn’t been seen anywhere since Laurence had left, not even in June when the members of their social circle saw each other ten times a day in ten different places. He hastened to assure his friends that he had, in fact, been very busy at work.
‘You’re lucky,’ said the man who had first spoken to him. ‘I would just as soon close down my offices and go away for six months: things couldn’t be any worse.’
One of the women asked how Laurence was in a tone of voice that wasn’t nasty or awkward, but the way you ask any old question in order not to ask something else, something more embarrassing.
His reply was curt and evasive. One of the couples walked away, followed by another. The two women who remained were smoking their cigarettes without saying a word.
‘It’s rather cool out here,’ said Harry.
They seemed happy for the excuse he purposely gave them, for he could tell that they too wanted to get away from him.
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ they cried. ‘It must be late. That wind coming from the lake isn’t very nice.’
They stood up, smiled at him and disappeared. He remained seated where he was, watching the light that shone dimly over the lake.
With his head lowered, his thin hands clasped around his knees, and his long, delicate neck tilted to one side, he resembled a bird alone on its perch amid other birds from a different species whom he watches from a distance without daring to approach. That image came to mind in spite of himself, and remained with him from then on. He stood up, making an effort to be cheerful and proud. After all, what had he done that should make him feel guilty like this?
‘Nothing,’ he thought forcefully, ‘nothing. My wife and I separated on good terms, and besides, my personal life is nobody’s business. What’s wrong with everybody tonight?’
He tried to reassure himself. On a number of occasions in the past he had surprised himself by how vulnerable he felt. He reacted so strongly to the slightest hint of blame or coldness.
‘Well, I don’t give a damn about these people,’ he murmured brutally. ‘I don’t give a damn!’
He felt cold, yet his forehead was covered in perspiration. Nervously he wrung his hands.
‘Something terrible has happened,’ he thought. ‘Something I know nothing about. But they all know!’
His immediate thought was of the bank. He hadn’t been there in over a week. For two years he had lived with a vague yet overpowering sense of foreboding, but – and this was what was so strange – not only did this state of fear, of muffled panic, not surprise him, it was as if he recognised it, just as a man returning to the seaside home of his childhood tastes the bitterness of the ocean on his lips even before he hears it. Instinctively, without knowing exactly what it was that he feared, he had employed all the defensive reflexes that make it possible to deal with anxiety. He knew which thoughts were acceptable and which had to be dismissed; he knew how to prepare his mind to be watchful in order to cover up the very thing that he would nevertheless have to admit one day and which was impossible to prevent. He had learned how to bear insomnia, apprehension and that sudden pounding of his heart every time the telephone rang unexpectedly, every time the doorbell rang. Learned? No! He had always known these things.
Women in pink dresses walked by beneath the trees; the men were laughing, the l
ittle burning ends of their cigars lighting up their peaceful, happy faces. They were his friends; he had never seen any difference between him and them. He now wondered if he hadn’t actually been mistaken, if they really understood him and how they would treat him if something terrible happened to him.
For he knew that something terrible had happened. He could sense it; he could feel it in the air, just as animals can smell a storm getting closer . . . It was all coming back to him: that icy hand clutching at his heart, the inability to breathe followed by the gasping for air, the thirst, the overwhelming sadness. Nothing seemed surprising to him: not his silent resignation, nor his invincible hope. (‘It will take a lot of courage, a lot of work. Who else in this world can pride themselves on having as much or more courage and ability to work than me? And besides, it will pass. Everything has already happened, I don’t know where or when, but I have already lost everything and found it again. None of it is of any real importance. Death itself is of no real importance.’) He acknowledged all his fantasies, all his anguish. And, every now and again, he awoke as if from a dream and thought, ‘But what has actually happened? These people have been cold towards me, that’s all. Why is that so unusual? At least two of those women sent me invitations and I cancelled at the last minute, that’s all, that’s enough; and the man is a fool! . . . After all, I know I’m not guilty of anything. No, I haven’t done anything! I’m innocent!’
But had he ever felt that blessed certainty of being innocent, of being forgiven, of being loved? No! He had been born feeling guilty of a crime he had not committed, knowing that no one would intervene for him, no one would save him, that he would be alone with a fearsome god.
Suddenly, he could no longer bear his solitude. He stood up and joined the groups of people passing by. He listened to the women laughing; he walked to the lake, then went back to the house. Very few people were left. He wandered through the half empty reception rooms. He asked for his car. As he was crossing the terrace, he heard another voice behind him whisper, ‘Harry Sinner . . .’
He shivered. Who had spoken his name? He turned around, waited. But no one had called him. Someone was just talking about him. Everyone was talking about him tonight. He felt lost.
In his car, he sat up, calm and straight, but gradually his arms drooped, he lowered his head and hunched his shoulders. Thin and frail, rubbing his beautiful hands together, he swayed gently in the darkness, just as so many moneychangers standing behind their counters, just as countless rabbis bent over their books, just as a multitude of immigrants standing on the bridges of innumberable boats had done before him. And, like them, he felt like an outsider, lost and alone.
31
How easy it is to disappear for a girl like Ada. She paid for the furnished room, packed her books into Ben’s little trunk, put some clothes into a suitcase, took down the pictures from the walls, folded the soft, warm blanket Harry had given her into an old hat box and left.
‘Aren’t you going to give me a forwarding address?’ the concierge had asked. ‘If the gentleman, you know who I mean, if he asks for you, what am I supposed to say?’
‘Say that I went away with my husband.’
‘Really?’
The concierge looked at her with pity. Presumably the police had already questioned her about Ben.
‘If he really wanted to find me,’ Ada thought, ‘the Immigration Office or the Prefect of Police could give him information, but he’ll think I’ve gone far away, to another country. He can’t leave France now to come and find me, and it’s better that way. It’s definitely better that way.’
She had gone into a post office and written a note to Harry:
‘I’m going with Ben. This is goodbye.’
What else could she say? Her heart was as heavy and cold as stone, even her mind, normally so quick and lively, seemed inert and dull, or as if numbed by the cold. If only she could believe she would remain like that, the future might seem bearable, but she knew very well that she would wake up one day and realise exactly what she had lost.
For two days, she had walked back and forth past Laurence’s house. At first, she thought she would go to her, explain the situation as it was, make her understand that she was pretending to leave Harry, that she was sacrificing herself for Harry. She felt a rather base, though irrefutable, pleasure – the kind of pleasure you feel watching a play at the theatre – in imagining Laurence’s confusion, astonishment and admiration. For Laurence would have admired her . . . She walked along the scorching street (it was the end of August, and the days were unbearably hot) and looked up at the high, large windows with envy. How big and cool the rooms must be behind their closed shutters! She would be ushered in to see Laurence. ‘Take him back,’ she would say. ‘I’ve got what I wanted. I won’t ask for anything more. I do not wish him to lose everything because of me.’ She hated herself for bringing pride into her love; was pride really so deeply engrained in her heart, the ‘hardened heart’ that the Scriptures mention? And could she rid herself of it any more than she could rid herself of her own blood?
She was afraid that Laurence might have left Paris at this time of year, when all the windows in the rich neighbourhoods are locked and the apartments empty. But she had made enquiries: all of the Delarchers were still in the city, and this seemed a sign of hope to Ada. Not all the ties between Harry and his wife had been broken. Laurence still cared about Harry; she didn’t want to leave him. ‘Perhaps she made up some excuse to remain in Paris?’ thought Ada. A savage, almost maternal sadness tore through her when she imagined Harry feeling so abandoned, so alone; at such moments, she believed she might actually have the courage to go into Laurence’s house and drag her to Harry’s door. But she didn’t dare. Forty-eight hours had already passed as if in a dark, terrifying dream.
‘I am leaving to go with my husband who has been deported from France,’ she wrote to Laurence. ‘You must understand that I will never return and that you can both forget me . . .’
But she stopped. She tore up the letter. It was essential that she hear from Laurence’s own lips that she would go back to her husband and, more importantly, that the elderly Delarcher would not abandon his son-in-law . . . And this was Ada’s secret hope. She would do anything in the world to save Harry. But what if that wasn’t possible?
At other times, she thought, ‘I’ll pretend to disappear. Everything will get sorted out, and then . . .’ But the danger was too great, too pressing: it could only be averted by completely sacrificing any possibility of happiness.
‘If I do that, God will punish me,’ she thought.
She would stop and look, from a distance, at the Catholic churches with their rows of lit candles, visible through the doors left open on such hot days. But it was the same as looking at Laurence’s house: all of that was a different world, a world she was not allowed to enter. She kept walking, endlessly walking. She was aching with thirst; she stopped for a few moments in a little square in the neighbourhood where Laurence lived: cool water flowed from a fountain. She wet her hands and face, then set off again.
Finally, on the evening of the second day, she saw Laurence coming out of her house. She had only seen her a few times before; up until now, she had thought of her without attributing to her any truly human characteristics: she was Harry’s wife. She was part of that brilliant circle who, ever since she and Harry were born, had come between them, dazzling her, as cold and blurred as the stars in the sky. Now she truly saw her: she was a young, beautiful woman, but neither her youth nor her beauty had that other-worldly essence that Ada had imagined. She was not a goddess: she was a blonde whose complexion would quickly lose its bloom, and which was reddened by the heat. Ada was overwhelmed by fear and a physical sensation of jealousy that she had never felt before: fear because it occurred to her that Laurence might not have the power she attributed to her, and with this thought, all her ideas suddenly seemed flawed, all her hopes were lifted up and dashed, like wisps of straw carried off in a whirlwind. S
he doubted the superiority, the omnipotence of the French family. She had believed that all she had to do was return Harry to the Delarchers in order to save him, but was that really true? Weren’t there other powerful people she could go to for help? This was how her ancestors had spent their lives on earth: desperately seeking ever more influential, more highly placed protectors, but never finding them, constantly anxious about the ones they had found – these men who had once had God as their master but had forsaken Him. And to feel the great Laurence so close to her, so similar to an ordinary woman, she finally understood simple feminine jealousy: she could imagine Harry reconciled with his wife, which meant sharing her room, her bed, caressing her. Fierce loathing filled her heart.
‘Finally I can see Harry as the same as me,’ she thought, ‘truly the same as me, brought up on the same bitter bread, and I’m hesitating! I want to send him back to his wife, his child, his Canalettos in the dining room I hardly dare enter, back to his expensive leather books bearing the arms of French kings, back to everything that makes him a stranger to me? Never! Never!’
She was crying. Passers-by looked at her, but she had cried far more often in the streets, amid a crowd, than she ever had in private, behind closed shutters and drawn curtains; it wasn’t the first time. She wasn’t ashamed of her tears: she knew that no one really cared, that she could sob as much as she liked, collapsed on a bench, without causing any reaction other than a policeman shrugging his shoulders and saying, ‘Come, come . . . you mustn’t get so upset. Come on, my girl . . .’
She cried for a long time beneath the trees on the wide avenue. Her hair was dishevelled and her cheek bruised by the iron bars of the gate she’d been leaning on; only one child stopped and looked at her with serious, kindly pity. She smiled at him through her tears.