Promise at Dawn

  I must say that my mother was deeply struck by this flagrant proof of my intentions. She looked at me reproachfully. I had obviously gone too far. I myself felt not a little embarrassed, for it was true that I had made Adèle swallow all of Proust, volume by volume, in rapid succession, and that, in her eyes, was as good as telling her that she could go ahead with the wedding dress. God forgive me!—I had even made her learn by heart passages from Thus Spake Zarathustra. I didn’t put her in a family way, but there was no denying the fact—I may as well come clean with it—that I made her read Flaubert, Gobineau, and—of all people—Lautréamont, and obviously could no longer contemplate slipping away on tiptoe.

  I could see that my mother was weakening, and I began to feel really scared. Her attitude toward Adèle had suddenly become all sweetness and kindness, and a sort of female solidarity developed between the two women. They looked at me searchingly and censoriously. They mingled their sighs and whispered to each other. My mother offered Adèle a cup of tea and—supreme mark of good will—made her sample some strawberry jam of her own making, and the delicatessen girl was clever enough to hit on just the right note of praise. I felt that my ship was sinking rapidly. When tea was over, my mother took me into the office.

  “Are you really and truly in love with her?”

  “No. I love her with all my heart, but not really and truly.” “Then why have you made her promises?”

  “I haven’t made her any promises.”

  “How many volumes of Proust are there?”

  “Listen, Mother . . .”

  She shook her head. “You have not behaved at all well.”

  All of a sudden her voice broke, and I saw to my amazement that she was crying. She touched my cheek with her fingers and stared at me, her eyes going searchingly and lovingly over every feature of my face, and I knew that she was remembering, that she was trying to find a resemblance. . . . I was almost afraid that she would tell me to go to the window and raise my eyes.

  All the same, she did not insist on my marrying the girl, thus sparing the latter a cruel destiny, and when, twenty years later, in Aix-en-Province, Adèle introduced her nine children to me, I felt no surprise at the warm gratitude shown me by the whole family. They owed it all to me. Her husband fully realized this, and wrung my hand effusively. I looked at the nine angelic faces, I felt around me the tranquil prosperity of a happy home, I glanced discreetly at the bookshelf, which contained only Les aventures des Pieds Nickelés, and the feeling came to me that I had, once at least, made a success of something in my life, and shown myself to be a good father, by abstention.

  Autumn was approaching, and my departure for Paris. A week before I embarked for Babylon my mother had a religious crisis. Until that moment I had never heard her speak of God except in a way that showed a certain bourgeois respect for somebody who had “made good.” She had always shown a high degree of consideration for the Creator, but with that purely verbal and impersonal deference which she kept for persons who occupied high positions. So I was rather surprised when, putting on her cloak and taking her stick, she asked me to go with her to the Greek Orthodox Church at the Parc Impérial.

  “But I thought we were more or less Jewish.”

  “That has nothing to do with it: I know the priest.”

  That seemed to me to be a good enough explanation. My mother believed in the importance of good personal contacts, even in her dealings with the Almighty. As for myself, I had, more than once, in the days of my adolescence, turned to God, and had even gone so far as to be converted for good, though only temporarily, when my mother had had her first diabetic crisis and I had stood by helplessly watching her in a coma. The sight of her ashen face, of her drooping head, of her hand pressed to her breast, of that complete collapse of all her powers of resistance, at a time, too, when there was such a load of responsibility on her shoulders, had been enough to send me, there and then, into the first church my eyes saw, which happened to be that of Notre Dame. I kept it a secret from her, fearing that she would see in this appeal to outside help a sign that I had lost my confidence and faith in her, and also an indication of the gravity of her condition. I thought she might suddenly imagine that I had felt I could no longer rely on her and I was looking for support elsewhere, that, in turning to another, I was abandoning her. But very soon the idea I formed of divine providence seemed to me incompatible with what I saw happening on earth, and it was, after all, on earth that I wanted to see a happy smile upon my mother’s face. Nevertheless, I find the word “atheist” intolerable. It seems to me stupid and mean, it smells of the bad dust of centuries, it is old fashioned and narrow-minded in a certain bourgeois and reactionary way which I cannot define though it outrages me, as does everything that smacks of self-satisfaction, and claims, conceitedly, to be emancipated and “knowing.”

  “We will go to the Russian Church at the Parc Impérial.” I gave her my arm. She still walked fast, with the determined air of those who have a goal in life. She had taken to wearing spectacles, horn-rimmed ones, which accented the beauty of her green eyes. She had very beautiful eyes. Her face was lined and worn and she no longer held herself as upright as she once had. She leaned more and more heavily on her stick, though she was only fifty-four. She suffered too from chronic eczema on her wrists. No one has the right to treat human beings like that. I was beginning to have strange dreams: I dreamed that I had been changed into a tree with a very tough bark or into an elephant whose hide was a hundred times thicker than mine. I had also developed the habit—I have it still—of taking my foil, stepping out into the open, garden, beach or hill, and, without even indulging in the customary salute, crossing swords with every ray of light which struck at me from the sky. I take up my stance, stretching my legs till I almost split in two, I leap, I lunge, I try to hit, I shout: “And here!” and “Take that!” I dash forward, I look for my enemy, I feint, I bounce, in fact I behave much as I once did on the tennis court of the Parc Impérial, when I danced my desperate dance in pursuit of balls I never succeeded in touching.

  Among other swashbuckling swordsmen, Malraux has always been the one I most admire. Of all our fighters, he is the one I prefer. Especially in his poem on art Malraux seemed to me to be an author-actor playing his own tragedy: or rather, a mime, a universal mime. When, alone upon my hilltop, with nothing but the sky around me, I juggle with my three balls, just to show what I can do, I think of him. Together with the Chaplin of the old days, he is, without a doubt, the most moving mime of the human condition this country has known. That lightning flash of thought, condemned to reduce itself to art, that hand outstretched to the eternal, yet finding only another human hand to grasp, that marvelous intelligence compelled to stay contented with itself, that shattering aspiration to pierce, to grasp, to surmount, to transcend, which can never in the end reach beyond beauty, have long been for me, in the field, like the shoulder of a brother-fighter by my side.

  We walked along the Boulevard Carlonne toward the Boulevard du Tsarevitch. The church was empty and my mother seemed pleased to have, so to speak, exclusive use of it.

  “There is nobody else here,” she said. “We shan’t have to wait.”

  She spoke as though God were a doctor who would receive us at once. She crossed herself and I followed suit. She knelt down in front of the altar and I knelt beside her. There were tears upon her cheeks and her lips mumbled old Russian prayers in which the words Yessouss Christoss recurred incessantly. I stayed beside her with my eyes cast down. She beat her breast and once, without turning to me, murmured: “Swear to me that you will never take money from women.”

  “I swear.”

  The idea that she was herself a woman never seemed to enter her mind.

  “O Lord! Help him to stand upright, help him to stand straight, guard him from sickness.”

  Then, this time turning to me: “Swear to be careful! Promise me not to catch anything!”

  “I promise.”

  For some while longer my mot
her stayed there, not praying but only crying. Then I helped her to her feet and there we were, back in the street. She wiped her eyes and suddenly appeared to be satisfied. There was even a look of almost childish cunning on her face when she turned toward the church for the last time.

  “One never knows,” she said.

  Next morning I took the bus to Paris. Before starting, I had to sit down and remain seated for a moment so as to keep bad luck away, according to an old Russian superstition. She had given me five hundred francs, which she made me carry in a leather pouch under my shirt, no doubt as a precaution in case the bus should be held up by brigands. I swore to myself that this would be the last sum I accepted from her and, though I have not altogether kept my word, I felt much relieved at the time.

  In Paris, I shut myself away in a minuscule hotel room and, wholly neglecting the law school, settled down with determination to my writing. At noon, I walked to the rue Mouffetard, where I bought bread, cheese and, of course, dill pickles. I never managed to get back to my room with the pickles intact but ate them, there and then, in the street. That, for some weeks, was the only satisfaction I had. Not, however, that temptations were lacking. As I stood with my back against a wall, restoring my strength, my eyes were attracted by a young girl of quite incredible beauty. She had black eyes and brown hair of a silkiness without precedent in the history of human hair. She did her shopping at the same time as I did mine and I got into the habit of watching for her to come down the street. I expected absolutely nothing of her—I could not afford even to take her to a cinema. All I wanted was to eat my pickle while feasting my eyes on her. I have always had a tendency to get ravenously hungry when looking at beauty—whether landscapes, colors or women. I am a born consumer. Finally, the girl noticed the odd way in which I stared at her while devouring dill pickles. She must have been struck by my immoderate craving for those estimable vegetables, and by the rapidity with which I swallowed them, and though she never gave me a look, she did smile faintly when she passed me. One fine day when I was surpassing all my former efforts with a truly enormous pickle she could control herself no longer and said, with a note of sincere concern in her voice: “One of these days you’ll burst.”

  We struck up an acquaintanceship. It was a stroke of luck for me that the first girl with whom I fell in love in Paris was totally disinterested. She was a student and, with the single exception of her sister, was quite the prettiest girl in the whole of the Quartier Latin at that time. Young men in cars paid assiduous court to her, and even today, twenty years later, whenever I happen to catch sight of her in Paris, my heart beats faster, my mouth waters and I dash into the first delicatessen shop on my way and buy a pound of pickles.

  One morning, when I had no more than fifty francs left and a fresh application to my mother was becoming imperative, I found, on opening the weekly Gringoire, one whole page devoted to a short story of mine called “I’Orage,” and my name in fat letters in all the appropriate places.

  I slowly folded the weekly and went home. I did not feel in the least little bit excited but, on the contrary, sad and tired. I already knew the difference between the ocean and a drop of water and it only made me once more aware of the impossible task ahead.

  But no words of mine will serve to describe the sensation which the publication of my story produced in the Buffa Market. An apéritif in honor of my mother was given by the traders, toasts and long speeches were read with the most glorious niçois accent and in an atmosphere thick with garlic breath. My mother put the copy of Gringoire in her bag and never went anywhere without it. At the slightest provocation, she took it out, opened it, stuck the page adorned with my name under the nose of her adversary and said: “I think you forget to whom you have the honor of speaking!”

  After which, with her head held high, she stalked victoriously from the field of battle, followed by a host of astonished eyes.

  I got a thousand francs for that story and, as a consequence, completely lost my head. I had never before seen such a sum and, going at once to extremes, like someone else of my acquaintance, felt secure from want for the rest of my days. The first thing I did was to go to the Brasserie Balzar, where I stowed two helpings of choucroute and a large plateful of pot-au-feu. I have always been a big eater. I took a room on the fifth floor of the hotel with a window looking onto the street and wrote a very calm and collected letter to my mother, explaining that I had a regular contract with Gringoire, as well as with several other publications, and from now on, if ever she was in want of money, she had only to let me know. I dispatched an enormous bottle of perfume and arranged by telegram for a bouquet to be delivered to her. I bought myself a box of cigars and a sport coat. The cigars made me feel sick but I was determined to live in the grand manner and smoked the lot. Thereupon, seizing my fountain pen, I wrote three stories in rapid succession, all of which were returned to me, not only by Gringoire but by every other Paris weekly. For six months not one of my works saw the light of day. They were considered “too literary.” At the time I did not understand what was happening to me, but now I do. Encouraged by my first success, I let myself be carried away by my devouring need to catch the last ball no matter what the cost, to go to the bottom of the problem at a single stroke of the pen; and, since the problem had no bottom or, if it had, my arm was not long enough to reach it, I found myself once more reduced to playing the part of the clown dancing on the tennis court at the Parc Impérial. Such an exhibition, tragic and burlesque though it might be, could only dismay the public through my sheer inability to control what I could not even grasp, instead of reassuring them, as do true professionals, by the ease and expertness with which they keep well within their capacities. It took me a long time to admit that the reader was entitled to a certain amount of consideration and that it was necessary to explain to him, as to every newcomer at the Hôtel-Pension Mermonts, the number of his room, the way the switches worked, to give him his key and indicate where he would find all the necessities.

  It was not long before my situation became, from the material point of view, well-nigh desperate. Not only had my money melted away with incredible rapidity but I kept on getting letters from my mother overflowing with pride and gratitude, together with a request to let her know, well in advance, the publication dates of my future masterpieces so that she might be in a position to trumpet them all over the quartier.

  I had not the heart to tell her of my failures. I therefore had recourse to a clever piece of subterfuge of which I feel very proud to this day. I wrote to my mother explaining that the newspaper and magazine editors were demanding stories of so commercial a nature that I was refusing to compromise my literary reputation by signing them with my name and was, so I told her, making use of a variety of pen names for these inferior products unworthy of my pen. I begged her not to breathe a word of this to anyone, since I did not wish to hurt my friends, my masters at the Nice lycée, in short, those who believed in my genius and integrity.

  Thereafter, each week I coolly cut out the work of other writers appearing in the pages of the Paris weeklies and sent them to my mother with a clear conscience and a feeling that I had done my duty.

  This solution disposed of the moral problem, but left the material problem untouched. I no longer had enough money to pay my rent and spent whole days without eating. I would rather have died of starvation than destroy my mother’s glorious illusions by asking her for money.

  One particularly gloomy evening comes to my mind. I had eaten nothing since the previous day. At that time I was in the habit of going frequently to see one of my friends who lived with his parents not very far from the Lecourbe Métro station and had noticed that, if I calculated the time of my arrival properly, they always asked me to stay to dinner.

  My stomach was empty and I thought it might be a good idea to pay a polite call on them. I even took one of my manuscripts to read aloud, for I felt very kindly disposed toward Monsieur and Madame Bondy. I was almost mad with hunger and also with t
hat feeling of indignation, resentment and mean rage which an empty stomach always stirs up in me. I planned to be passing by sheer coincidence—just when the soup would appear upon the table. When I reached the Place de la Contrescarpe, I could already smell in my imagination the delicious brew of potatoes and leeks, though I was still forty-five minutes’ walk from the rue Lecourbe—I hadn’t enough money to pay for a Métro ticket. My mouth was watering and there must have been a gleam of crazy concupiscence in my eyes, judging from the way such unaccompanied women as I passed gave me a wide berth and increased their pace. I was also pretty certain there would be Hungarian salami too—there always had been, on previous occasions. I don’t think I ever went to a lover’s tryst with so delicious a sense of anticipation.

  When I finally arrived at my destination, overflowing with friendliness, there was no answer to the bell. My friends were out. I sat down on the stairs and waited for an hour, for two hours. But toward eleven o’clock, an elementary concern for my dignity—it always hangs about somewhere—kept me from staying there till midnight for the sole purpose of begging for something to eat.

  So I walked all the way back down the infernal rue de Vaugirard, the longest street in Paris, with a sense of frustration that made me feel like murdering the President of the Republic or killing myself. It was then that I reached another peak in my career as a champion of the world.