The Bachelors, page 8
'All the consequences of an authenticated act…' the piping voice continued in the other room as someone opened the door.
The desire to pay one's debts can arise either from honesty or from a pathological state. The latter was the case with our count. He could never be at peace with himself unless he felt that he was under no obligation to anyone. Moreover, he was afraid of reprisals from his creditors, as he was afraid of everything in such matters. When, some weeks after his mother's death, he had found two one-thousand franc notes in her desk, he was so terrified of being accused of having hidden them that he immediately informed Bourdillon by express letter.
'All the same,' said Lebeau, who was sitting on the edge of the table like a smart young bounder perched on a stool in an American Bar and poisoning the atmosphere with the fumes of his strong cigarette, 'All the same, it's silly not to contest a doubtful claim.'
'Well, if that's your opinion, let's try and make terms,' said M. de Coantré, pulling at his cuffs. It was a quick volte-face, but he was beginning to feel hypnotized by the bounder because, after all, this bounder was the boss.
'Oh, please don't do it for my sake,' said Lebeau. 'I simply said it would be silly.. . .'
'You must understand,' Bourdillon put in, 'that what M. de Coantré wants first and foremost is peace of mind. And he's ready to pay the price for it. If we settle with Defraisse without further argument, he won't have to worry any more.'
'Obviously!' Lebeau said facetiously.
'In spite of this procedure . . .' said the voice of the Catholic lecturer.
'Do you think Defraisse would compromise?' the count asked in the tone of voice in which one might ask a doctor. 'Do you think I'll get over it?' which is to say that it was an idiotic question.
'My dear M. de Coantré, how do I know? You're the one who's got the papers, if there are any.'
There was a long pause. One might have assumed that M. de Coantré was carefully weighing the pros and cons. In fact he was thinking of nothing — literally nothing. His eyelids were beginning to droop, as though what he really wanted to do was to drop off to sleep.
'Look here,' said Lebeau, 'we're all wasting our time.' (Complacently he flicked the ash from his cigarette.) 'If M. de Coantré values his peace of mind above everything else, he had better pay up. Otherwise, we should probably have to ask him to see Defraisse . . .'
The cruel politeness of 'We're all wasting our time' made M. de Coantré writhe. Could there possibly be a more courteous way of saying, 'You're wasting my time?'
'All right, let's pay him, and get it over with,' he said.
'Very well,' said the chief clerk heartily. 'But don't say I forced your hand. I'm still quite prepared to see Defraisse and argue with him, provided you help me, of course . . .'
'No, no,' said M. de Coantré. 'Sell as many of the shares as you need to, and let's hear no more about it.'
They chatted a bit longer and then, 'having said all there was to be said,' M. de Coantré got up to go. It was only then that he realized that Lebeau had left the room — without saying goodbye to him.
Scarcely had M. de Coantré gone before Bourdillon was running after him with a half-mocking, half-pitying smile and handing him his bundle of papers, which he had forgotten. Every time he left the lawyer's office he forgot something.
Once outside, he began to walk aimlessly. He felt so disgruntled that he stopped at the first tobacconist's to buy a packet of cigarettes. Six months before, when he realized his new financial position, he had given up smoking to save money. But now his will-power was crumbling. On the most favourable assumption, if no more creditors turned up, he would have two thousand francs left! 'But after all,' he thought, 'there's still time to tell him to contest it. I'll have a look through my papers. In any case, even if I have to pay, there's always Uncle Octave.' He noticed that involuntarily — as a horse whose rider has fallen asleep automatically takes the accustomed route — his steps had led him to the boulevard Haussmann. He went upstairs without taking the lift, for he was afraid of such machines (similarly, without either of them having mentioned it, M. Élie never took the lift).
M. Octave was out. Léon pretended to look for a visiting card in his wallet (for twenty years he had had none) and exclaimed 'I've just given the last one away!' having forgotten, as Papon, who eyed him in silence, had not, that he had already been through this little act twice before in Uncle Octave's hall. Then, on a slip of paper which he afterwards put in an envelope, he wrote 'My dear uncle, a new creditor has turned up at Lebeau's: five thousand francs. Once this is paid (and a thousand francs saved elsewhere), I shall have two thousand left. No comment. I shall, if I may, call on you tomorrow at five. Your affectionate Léon.' When he saw himself signing 'Léon' on a note to M. Octave, he had the impression that he was on a footing of great intimacy with his uncle, and that his uncle wished him well. He put 'your affectionate' because it was a formula used by the Duc d,Orléans.
He did not get back to the boulevard Arago until eight o'clock, having a genius for taking three or four hours, so fantastic were the means of transport he adopted, on a journey which a messenger boy (not by nature in a hurry) would have done in one. M. Élie had started dinner without him. He went straight upstairs to change, partly to spare his 'best' clothes but also because he always felt slightly uncomfortable in them. And when he saw these clothes laid out on the bed, he remembered all the trouble he had had earlier in the day, brushing them, finding a clean shirt, cleaning his boots, shaving, etc., and the pill he had just swallowed seemed even more bitter. When one 'dresses up', he thought, one ought at least to be rewarded by the success of whatever it was that made it necessary.
In the dining-room, taking advantage of Mélanie's momentary absence, he said to M. Élie:
'Uncle, I have some bad news for you . .
M. Élie looked up sharply and stared at him, showing his big, pale pupils.
'What's that?'
'There's a new debt on the estate, and when it's paid I'll have only two thousand francs left.'
M. de Coëtquidan breathed again. An odd way to express oneself, typical of the de Coantrés of this world, to speak of bad news to a third party when the news is only bad for oneself.
'Actually,' M. de Coantré went on, 'it isn't certain that we'll have to pay. I must go through my papers. If I happened to find ...'
'Ha! there's Minine,' said M. Élie. 'He wants to come in.'
He had heard a miaow behind the front door. He got up, let the cat in, and gave it a few scraps of meat which he tore off roughly with his fingers like an Arab.
'Yes,' M. de Coantré continued, 'it may be that my having found the letter from M. d'Aumagne, which if it had been couched in terms ...'
'Ah, Minine! You want to go out?'
The cat had gone back to the door and was indeed now miaowing to be let out. The cats of the Arago household had this in common with humans: they always wanted to be somewhere else. So M. de Coëtquidan, a devoted slave to their every wish, was always opening a door somewhere or other, and the phrase 'He wants to come in' or 'He wants to go out' had become a private joke betwéen Mme de Coantré, Léon and Mélanie. It should be noted, in passing, that M. de Coëtquidan addressed cats in the second person plural, which sounds rather grand, instead of saying 'tu' in the normal way. Did they say 'vous' to cats at the court of Louis XIV? Perhaps they did until the latter part of his reign, when it was felt that the time had come to 'brighten things up a bit.'
M. de Coëtquidan came back. But by now Léon had understood, and said no more about his affairs.
Soon after dinner he went up to his room and wrote three letters. Impulsive as he was, he would have suffered if something had prevented him from writing these letters at once, even though they could not be posted until the next day. One was addressed to the son of the old lady in whose house he had lodged at Chatenay; another to a decayed nobleman, a sort of jack-of-all-trades who dabbled in marriage-making and had done so for him; the third to one of the doctors at his auxiliary hospital. He had had no dealings with these people for twenty, fifteen and ten years respectively, but they were the only names he could think of when, during dinner, he had made this resolution: 'There's no time to lose. It's time I found myself a job.' In these three letters M. de Coantré explained his situation in a few words and asked if he could 'do something'. He emphasized his talents as a male nurse.
When he had written them, he felt he had taken action. Three letters! Proudly he weighed them in his hand. And, no doubt, writing a letter is an action. This impression of having 'taken a step forward' somewhat assuaged his bitter feelings.
(It is amusing to observe that M. de Coantré's handwriting, firm, upright, well-formed, the signature strongly underlined, would have credited him, in the eyes of a graphologist, with all the characteristics — concision, energy, pride, vitality — in which he was most conspicuously lacking.)
That night, he woke up at two o'clock, a thing which never happened to him, and did not go to sleep again.
Next morning he went up to the attic, where there was a packing-case full of letters addressed to his mother, which for the past six months he had not found time to sort because the idea of it was too irksome. There, perhaps, some document lay buried which would enable him to avoid paying the five thousand francs. He took out three packets of letters, and immediately was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task; it is always astonishing to see, in a dead person's room, how many letters someone of no social importance has managed to receive.
Before going to Lebeau's, Léon had made up his mind to spend the next morning at a job he adored, a job he wallowed in, a job that had almost become a vice with him — and vice is the word, for it gave him an almost sensual pleasure: mowing the lawn. And he needed this pleasure all the more today because he had to compensate himself for the ordeal of having to go back to Lebeau's. After debating with himself for a few moments, he decided to indulge himself and forget the five thousand francs. He closed the packing-case and went down from the attic to play with the mowing-machine. When an unpleasant thought occurred to him, he simply told himself: 'Anyway, I made a thousand francs yesterday' (on the lawyer's fees).
That afternoon he wrote to Bourdillon: 'In spite of my searches, I have found absolutely nothing which might enable me to contest the Defraisse claim. Will you therefore take the necessary steps to see that this man is paid.' (This man! When one pays someone what one owes him, one naturally acquires the right to insult him a little.)
He wrote the address on the envelope with scrupulous care. Ever since he had noticed the envelopes of letters he had addressed to Bourdillon carefully pinned on his file, he sensed that the contents of these envelopes might be enough to hang him. And he sent Mélanie to post the letter, although M. Élie might have done so on his way out. But he was afraid that M. Élie, unable to resist the temptation to unstick the stamp, might spend his afternoon walk delivering the letter himself; and what on earth would they think of the rectangle of glue on the envelope?
Once the cook had gone, M. de Coantré experienced a kind of euphoria comparable to that of a martyr going to the stake or, better still, a man who has slit open a vein and whose life is ebbing away: the languorous pleasure of utter impotence. There was something beatific about the ease with which M. de Coantré shed his possessions. And this is clearly what the masses feel when they interpret the famous passage, referring to a certain category of beings, to mean that theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
5
TO BE THE 'plutocrat of the family' is not a state one would wish on anybody. It would take a long time to work out the total sum that his relations, one after the other, had extracted from M. Octave. He had painstakingly supported Mme de Coantré when she was assailed by the money troubles brought down on her by her husband and her son. He had taken in Mme de Piagnes when she became a widow, and, incredible as it may seem, the rent she paid him in 1924 — four francs a day — had not altered since 1906. He had showered presents on his great-niece Simone de Bauret and 'taken her around', until the old cousin took a fancy to her. And this is to mention only the family. In fact no stranger ever approached him in vain.
M. Octave had acquired the habit of dispensing largesse — or rather had it instilled into him — to such an extent that he was now obsessed with the idea that, whatever happened to him, he was most unlikely to get through it without having to put his hand in his pocket. This was highly distasteful to him, not so much the giving away of his money, for he was not by nature ungenerous, as the fact that he did not know how to give it. We have said that all the Coëtquidans were shy. The 'lovebirds' made no attempt to overcome their shyness: it bound them hand and foot. Old Coëtquidan and M. Élie conquered it by being gratuitously rude and cantankerous; they would quite suddenly adopt a totally outlandish manner, which was their way of defending themselves by anticipation. M. Octave conquered it with money, which enabled him to withdraw from embarrassing situations by giving some of it away — though this in itself put a cruel strain on his shyness and on the peculiar awkwardness he suffered from, typical of those who have never penetrated below the surface of life.
The pain M. Octave suffered from continually being 'touched' was aggravated by the fact that, like the pain of a husband whose wife is deceiving him, it had to be concealed.
And needless to say, every act of generosity brought its trail of worries.
Just as, at the age of seventy, he had still not found the right tone in which to speak to his subordinates, whether his own servants or employees at the bank, alternating curtness, which came naturally to him, with a forced bonhomie, which made him sweat blood, and changing his policy in this respect every twenty-four hours, M. Octave had never mastered the art of knowing when, how, how much, or even whether he ought to give. In this connexion, an incident in his youth had put him off for life. At the end of a short stay in the country during which friends had taken him for several drives, he decided, after long deliberations with himself which practically ruined the last few days of his visit, to slip the coachman fifty francs. Politely but firmly, and in front of everyone, the tip was refused, and he was left squirming with embarrassment. (After this, appalled at the thought of having hurt the man's feelings, he had tied himself up in knots in an effort to make amends, blurting out some nonsense that gave every appearance of an apology, and did not consider himself absolved until six years later by a First Communion present he gave the man's son.)
Ever since then, giving frightened him. It infected even the simplest things, especially any kind of service that was done for him. Should he give? Had he given enough? Had he given too much? He asked everyone's advice, and then, having given, how anxiously he would scrutinize the recipient's face to find out his reaction! When, one day, he was heard to say 'I don't like people to do me favours', it was regarded as an example of revolting pride. In fact the baron had plenty of egoism, a fair amount of vanity (as much as is hygienically necessary), but no pride. He disliked receiving favours because he felt obliged to return them, and this presented problems which tortured him. Every time the baron came to someone's aid monetarily, the person concerned had to come to the baron's aid physically. This man had been seen, even when well into his fifties, blushing like a girl when he told someone that they could count on him if they were in difficulties. And simply to say this had cost him dear; he had called round twice before with this end in view, but each time, with the words on the tip of his tongue, he could not bring himself to utter them, feeling precisely the same embarrassment and shame as if he were asking for money instead of offering it. 'His generosity will kill him' was the unfriendly verdict of Léon's father (who pecked at the Coëtquidans as much as they pecked at the Coantrés), but this, it is true, was before he had had to submit to this generosity, which paid off part of his debts and was both big in cash and infinite in delicacy.
This general attitude of the baron's as regards charity was not quite the same when it came to his nephew. He could not, of course, leave his sister's son in want. At the same time, he knew that Léon had powerfully contributed to his mother's ruin, and although Mme de Coantré concealed from him her son's tantrums, he had had little difficulty in smelling them out. The enlarger business had not left him unscathed. He despised Léon for reasons that are easily guessed — and contempt, we are told, is 'the most pitiless of emotions' (André Suarès). Finally, however anxious he was, as a reaction against his father and because he believed that the Americans award merit only to the individual, to free himself from 'family' prejudices, he could not help feeling some antipathy towards the Coantrés — a family who had had a disastrous influence on his sister's life, who were shallower, less punctilious and less noble than the Coëtquidans, and who, moreover, had an easy-going cheerfulness, a suggestion of debonair ease which the Coëtquidans lacked and which therefore weighed on the same side as their failings in the Coëtquidan scales.
When M. Octave returned home to find Léon's scribbled note, he gave an exasperated 'Ah!' and then, at the thought of the handful of money which his nephew would be left with, realized that he would have to make an effort to find him a job if he was not to be saddled with him. He spoke to his sister about it over dinner.
Mme Émilie had a pale face which she made even paler by covering it with rice powder, forehead included; a flaming red wig; and teeth that were as yellow as those of a horse; the general effect, though it gave her a face in the Papal colours (which was praiseworthy) was not exactly pretty-pretty. Added to which she was thin, stooping, flat-breasted, with sparse eyebrows blackened with mascara and the Coëtquidan hands, which were her chief pride, so small at the end of her arms — scarcely wider than her wrists — that they were somehow grotesque, like atrophied limbs or the feet of a tadpole. Léon, living on his mother and naturally idle, did not conceal the amount of spare time he had. Mme Émilie, living on her brother and having nothing to do and no responsibilities, never had a minute — an example of feminine genius. A childish, querulous soul, utterly stupid, yet with some features that compelled respect, the flashes of wit and common sense she had shown in her youth had been absorbed, as it were, into the vague, pallid mush which was her substitute for the inner life — like one of those children who impress one with their enormous eyes, but when we meet them again later on, their eyes seem to have shrunk simply through not having grown in the same proportion as the rest of the face.
