The Catalans

  —There was a long, reflective pause, then Xavier’s deep voice continued, more equably now, more equably, and still the cicadas thrummed in all the trees.

  The Pleiades had risen now: Alain could see them all, all but the last, a cluster above the fig tree. In the beginning he had listened closely to Xavier, closely, anxiously, sitting upright and with his mind stretched to hear and understand everything: the urgency of Xavier’s voice had required that reaction, the closeness, the assenting grunt, the head nodded in the darkness. But for a long while now he had been sitting back, lying back, in his chair: Xavier’s voice had settled into a steady, even flow that made no demands; and Alain was no longer listening with the top of his mind. All that was said he heard and understood. But he was not listening, listening to catch each word; now the sense flowed in at his ears—he could reconstruct the whole—but now his easier mind could also run to and fro, combining what Xavier had said with what he knew, assessing the knowledge he had and the continual stream of addition to it; and now his half-conscious observing faculty was free again. It had been so since his cousin had begun on works without faith, a long and intricate subject that had nothing to say to Dr. Roig. He recorded the fact that points of fine theology were of strong and immediate importance to Xavier, and that Xavier seemed to feel that religion and the law could both be logically discussed and reasoned upon with the same reference to precedent. But in this chain of reasoning Alain took no part, not even that of a silent follower: he formed from it a picture of Xavier’s mind—a picture made up of small impressions, the repetition of “Jansenists,” the approving tone in which Pascal’s name was mentioned, the citation of many, many writers unknown to Alain, but which reflected a wide and anxious reading. With that part of his attention which was at liberty he watched the progress of the stars.

  It had been the great ball of Jupiter first: when they had sat down the star was already high, so brilliant that it had a halo and so large that it was not a point in the sky but a disk. When they had sat down—it was after they had put out the lamp—Alain had half-consciously fixed the star in his mind: “There is Jupiter: how huge and brilliant.” But unnoticed in the first spate of talk Jupiter had climbed to the zenith, still in front of the Dog Star, whose light it eclipsed, and had traveled down the sky, far down to the right. It was when Xavier was talking of his father that Alain realized that the planet was gone, hidden behind the straight trunk of the palm tree on the declining west, lighting it from behind with a last gentle refulgence, and that the Dog Star, brilliant now, was halfway down to setting.

  Betelgeuse and Aldebaran: he watched them pass through the motionless, penetrable eucalyptus, branch by branch, lost and reappearing through the leaves; the continual curving sweep of stars. The progress of the stars and the run of his cousin’s voice: the time came when Alain, lying right back, deep in his chair, seemed hardly to possess a body, to be no more than a mind in a place, absorbing these two processions, relating and enfolding them.

  And then something was wrong, something was out of joint, as if the cicadas had stopped, or the night had suddenly grown cold. Sunk, or rather floating there, he had constructed the sense of what he heard with a lag of perhaps two or three sentences—a lag made longer sometimes when his own glosses on the unfolding text, footnotes, references, grew long and complex. He heard all that the steady voice said, but not what it was saying; so now, uncomfortably aware of a pause, an expectant pause, a question that had been repeated, something that demanded his participation, he forced himself to the surface, trying to hasten his mind’s process, catch up, understand. What was it? Xavier had been developing an idea about literal unbelief, figurative acceptance—necessity for the rejection of Heaven by the unbeliever but complete acceptance of Hell. Yes: but the last sentences, the immediate question?

  “What do you believe, Alain?” he said again.

  Alain was furious. Not only had be been wrenched brutally out of a wonderfully comfortable state, but he was being attacked with a question that should never have been asked. No no, he said (but not aloud), that will not do: I am not going to take off my clothes just because you have done so: there was no compact. You have not bought the right to a truthful answer: your truth has not bought it. Sincerity is not to be bought: it is given, if it comes at all—given or inflicted. And really, you cannot invade a man’s privacy like that.

  “Well, it is difficult to say,” he replied at last, uncomfortably, but with sufficient earnestness (a half-hypocrisy licensed by the unwarranted question) not to appear evasive—not to repel. “Credo in unum Deum . . .” his voice trailed away.

  In the long pause that followed Alain thought that it was finished now, that this unfortunate question and answer had been the stone that puts the birds to flight: but when Xavier spoke again it was obvious that he had hardly listened to the reply, that the argument had continued in his own silence. Now he took it up again, several stages along in the development, in almost the same voice, as if there had been no break at all.

  But the break had been long and painful for Alain: the abrupt, violent change from audience to performer could not be quickly reversed. It was not until Sirius touched the first of the western palm fronds that he had sunk back to something near his former depth. Now Xavier was returning toward an account of his progress: he had almost finished with his more general, imprecise way of speaking, but some fragments of what he had been saying floated in Alain’s head, waiting to be fixed if they were significant. “I am not a Communist (God forbid), but nothing I have ever heard of them has made me respect them half so much as their belief that it is indecent for a man to live to himself alone, to direct most of his energies to the acquisition of a comfortable home for himself and a safe future. I understand that this is a universal conviction, a basic social convention in Russia, so penetrating that even discontented, anti-Communist refugees reaching our world are shocked by the open avowal of selfishness here, as if by indecent exposure. However corrupt their practice may be, and however wicked their designs, a society that has that teaching surpasses ours, as a true society, as much as the living, every-day-of-the-week faith of the Middle Ages surpassed our moribund Sundays-only half-belief.” “Love your neighbor as yourself is not enough, nothing like enough, if you have a deep, well-founded dislike of yourself.” “Even if I did flatter myself into believing that I had half these virtues, or even all of them, it would make no difference: they are the Stoic virtues, the natural virtues, not the Christian virtues. Valuable, perhaps, in a general way—at least you despise a man without them—valuable perhaps, but not valid for me. Not valid, not relevant.” (With the former pain and urgency renewed.) “Not valid, any more than giving away money without good will—alms without kindness.”

  But those were things that had been said. Now Alain, while he still kept them on one side for arrangement, was thinking “He is a clear-sighted man: has he never realized how much he has indulged his superiority and his irritable nature?” And at once, as if it were Alain who was guiding the run of words, Xavier branched off and said, “How can you ever tell if another man is suffering more pain than you, or less? So that in the one case it is heroic in him not to cry out, and in the second cowardly even to wince? You cannot tell: you can only suppose. In the same way I cannot tell whether in fact I have a more irascible nature than others, really feel a higher degree of irritation, or merely yield more easily to the temptation, grow hot and angry when other men exercise more self-control. But I have always supposed that that was the case, and that those who behaved better were only more phlegmatic: it was a comfortable doctrine; it diminished the fault, and I must say that even now I believe it to be more true than false.

  “But however that may be, I have always noticed that in general small and large vexations, but especially trivial ones, often make me so furious that I have to put my hands in my pockets and turn away not to make a fool of myself—and this when other men remain perfectly unmoved. I used to be secretly a little flattered at my s
ensitivity and at my ability to cover it; and although I was aware, very clearly aware, that a degree of sensitivity that causes a man to pass perhaps a third of his lifetime in a state of intense, though disguised, irritation is no very welcome gift, yet it was not until this time that I came to suspect it as a wickedness, a thing that corrupts the very source of affection.

  “I resolved (oh with such a heart-felt resolution) not merely to curb my impatience—I had done that all my life—but to prevent its arising: and I resolved to cultivate a loving indulgence for my fellows, particularly those who vexed me. I knew that it would to a large extent be artificial at first, but I hoped that the quality would grow behind the pretense, like the face behind the mask in the story.

  “It was not with enthusiasm that I began on this new course: enthusiasm has a sound of warmth and pleasure. No: it was more as a man seizes upon a lifeline: he does not seize it with enthusiasm but with—what? Not desperation, for there is hope. The word escapes me: but it was with this same kind of feeling that I began.

  “During Georgette’s long illness Dédé had lived with Aunt Marinette, and they suggested that he should stay with them. There was a good deal to be said for the arrangement. I was very busy at that time, and in many ways Aunt Marinette’s house was more suitable for a child. But I thought it better to have him at home: he was backward, I knew, and Aunt Marinette, though kind, was not an ideal person to bring up a boy.

  “I would find time, cost what it might, to see to his education, and I would bring him up with loving-kindness and indulgence tempered with good sense. He was my own son, my only son, and if I could not find a tenderness in my heart even for him, then indeed I was a monster. I knew that I was not fond of children in general, but this was not anybody’s child, it was my own, and I had little doubt of the success of my scheme.

  “At the same time I bought a dog. Here again I knew that I was not what is called good with dogs, but I felt convinced that good will and common sense would make up for that.

  “I was younger then. I should be less sanguine now, and now perhaps I might foresee disaster in such schemes: for disasters they both were, disasters.

  “An unskillful man is generally unlucky as well, don’t you find? A man who is not a good driver is run into through no fault of his own, has a puncture every time he goes out, or some bizarre misadventure happens to him when it would not happen to anyone else. It was the same with me: I happened to fall on the child and the dog for whom ordinary, kind treatment was not suitable.

  “I will tell you about the dog first. It was a young liver-colored dog with a pink nose that Côme found for me. I knew nothing of these things, and asked him: I had to bow to his choice, of course, but it seemed a poor-looking creature to me. I suppose that it is very usual to trust a man in his trade although you know him to be a fool in other respects: anyhow, although I always considered Côme a lecherous half-wit (and still do) I thought that as he was always hunting or shooting with the aid of dogs, always among them, he would act intelligently in this instance. However, the dog proved to be as much a fool as Côme. It was said to be house-trained, but it was not, and that was a wearisome business. It was worse than that, for it started everything off on the wrong foot—it started with distaste and unkind feelings. It was a dog, I should have said, with overabundant energy and spirits, and at first it overflowed with indiscriminate, meaningless affection to such an extent that it was a nuisance. Unless it was restrained all the time it would break out into noisy excesses, grow overexcited and hysterical, take the wildest liberties. All the time it had to be checked or there was no peace, no possibility of obedience: kindness after restraint sent it off its head.

  “It was unfortunate that the first beating I ever gave the dog had a wonderful effect: it encouraged me to think for a long time that that was the best way of teaching it. There was so much that it had to be taught, so much that ordinary dogs seem to know intuitively—or perhaps I am wrong in saying that; perhaps I am judging from trained dogs. This dog—its name was Pedro—had to be taught not to stray, roaming the streets and picking in the dustbins, not to make filthy messes in this house and in other people’s, not to jump up, not to tear up plants in the garden, not to dig holes—oh, an infinity of lessons: and it learned very slowly and stupidly, if at all. To the end it could never be stopped barking at everybody or straying and haunting the rubbish heaps with the village curs. It had a great deal of cur in it, although it was said to be so well bred: it was quarrelsome, aggressive with other dogs, but the moment they showed their teeth, Pedro would run howling. Oh, it was a disaster, that dog. Yet there was a time when I did have a certain weak fondness for it: even the worst dog has some pretty ways when it is young. Occasionally, too, it would try to learn something and I would be pleased with it. But then fatally the next moment it would do something maddening and I would have to speak to it sharply—unless it was instantly checked it would continue to behave badly; it was a dog that took advantage at once of weakness or indulgence. I would speak to it sharply and it would start to cower. That cowering, crawling on its belly: I believe it feigned half the time. Certainly it did it more when we were out than at home. I would call it: it would not come—it was busy eating filth. I would call it sharply, go back toward it, and at once it would start this creeping off, flat on the ground, leaving a piddling stream behind it, as if I habitually lashed it to bloody insensibility. I could never teach it to come, or to stay reliably in to heel; and once it was out of arm’s reach it would chase sheep, goats, hens, anything that would run: so it was no companion on a walk. Nor could I ever teach it not to hang about the kitchen day and night: so in the end, when it appeared that I had reduced it to a cowering, hysterical, incontinent, useless cur, and when it was clear that it had no affection for me whatever, only a guilty desire to get out of my way, I gave in, let it go into the kitchen for good (they had always encouraged it) and there it remained, grossly bloated, an ill-conditioned bawler to the end of its days, when it bit the woman who had fed it for nine years, bit her viciously, and she smashed in its skull with a pestle.

  “Well, the parallel disaster of the child was not so dramatic; and it is not complete. Obviously, there is no comparison in the importance of the two (though it was surprising how that dog rested on my heart, for years and years) and obviously my hopes and efforts were far, far more important.

  “I listed the bad qualities of that dog so much at random that I do not know whether I conveyed the chief fault—the chief fault from my point of view—that it was not to be taught by kindness, that kindness was not the key to its nature.

  “It was the same with Dédé. He had been a long time with Aunt Marinette, as I have said, and for a long while before that I had not occupied myself with him very much: a man is out of place in a nursery. So he came home almost a stranger to me, and I was very much surprised to find what a nasty little boy he was. I do not suppose that I should ever have fully discovered it if it had not been for my new, imposed attitude of mild tolerance, and my attempt at helping with his education. He had been very badly spoilt in his babyhood, and he had just come from being abominably spoilt by Aunt Marinette, so a great deal of his nastiness was not to be imputed to him. In passing, I could say a great deal about women and the bringing-up of children, but I will not: I will just observe that I have met with precious few in the course of my life who were fit to be trusted with such a charge. Aunt Marinette was not one of them. But even making every allowance, he was a disagreeable little boy in his own right. No doubt I had an exalted idea of what my son ought to be like, far too exalted, but still I think at bottom I should have been satisfied with a manly boy, even if he had been affected, untruthful, hypocritical, unaffectionate, cruel, and of course grossly ill-mannered and undisciplined. During that first period I was able to look at him very thoroughly: believe me, Alain, a parent’s eye is not so blind as they say; when it is searching as desperately as mine was, it is as keen as an enemy’s. I looked into his shallow little soul,
and I found that in addition to all those disagreeable qualities it had an epicene namby-pambyness that filled me with despair—it seemed to go through and through him, to be basic and ineradicable.

  “Oh, those horrible lessons. I could not, even by the greatest economy of my working time, make more than two hours a day for him, one in the morning and one in the evening. It was a short enough time measured by the clock, but how it dragged on and on and on. At first, when he found that I was not to be feared, he would mince about showing off like a confident little ape, or he would give a performance of himself in the role of the arch, winning little boy, so quaint: it was a shocking indictment of the people he had been with, for it had evidently taken them in and pleased them. You know the kind of thing, head on one side, simper, saccharine expression. He would do this showing off for me alone—when there was no other audience but myself, I mean. Any child is liable to show off when there are many people there, particularly strangers, but surely it is very rare for a child to do it perpetually, even when there is only one person? It means that there is no possibility of any companionship, no human contact at all. And the ghastly thing was that what he wished to imitate was not an older child but a younger one. I cannot tell you how distasteful it was. However, I put it down to his spoiling, tried not to blame him for it, tried to wean him from it by whatever gentle means I could conceive, tried hard to like him in spite of it, and tried, quite vainly, to win his liking and his confidence.