Despair (21 page)

With shivers continuously running down my spine and a head fairly bursting, I made my way to the
syndicat d’initiative
, where a talkative individual suggested a score of resorts in the vicinity: I wanted a cosy secluded one, and when toward evening a leisurely bus dropped me at the address
I had chosen, it struck me that here was exactly what I desired.

Apart, alone, surrounded by cork oaks, stood a decent-looking hotel, the greater part still shuttered (the season beginning only in summer). A strong wind from Spain worried the chick fluff of the mimosas. In a pavilion, reminding one of a chapel, a spring of curative water gushed, and cobwebs hung in the corners of its ruby dark windows.

Few people were staying there. There was the doctor, the soul of the hotel and the sovereign of the table d’hôte: he sat at the head of the table and did the talking; there was the parrot-beaked old fellow in the alpaca coat, who used to produce an assortment of snorts and grunts, when, with a light patter of feet, the nimble maid served the trout which he had angled in the neighboring stream; there was a vulgar young couple come to this hole all the way from Madagascar; there was the little old lady in the muslin
gorgerette, a
school mistress; there was a jeweler with a large family; there was a finicking young person, who was styled at first vicomtesse, then comtesse and finally (which brings us to the time I am writing this) marquise—all due to the doctor’s exertions (who does all he can to enhance the establishment’s reputation). Let us not forget, too, the mournful commercial traveler from Paris, representative of a patented species of ham; nor the coarse fat abbé who kept jawing about the beauty of some cloister in the vicinity; and, to express it better, he would pluck a kiss from his meaty lips pursed into the semblance of a heartlet. That was all the collection, I believe. The beetle-browed manager stood near the door with his hands clasped behind his back and followed with a surly eye the ceremonial dinner. Outside a riotous wind raged.

These novel impressions had a beneficial effect upon me. The food was good. I had a sunny room, and it was interesting
to watch, from the window, the wind roughly upturning the several petticoats of the olive trees which it tumbled. In the distance against a mercilessly blue sky, there stood out the mauve-shaded sugar cone of a mountain resembling Fujiyama. I was not much out of doors: it frightened me, that thunder in my head, that incessant crashing, blinding March wind, that murderous mountain draft. Still, on the second day, I went to town for newspapers, and once again there was nothing in them, and because the suspense exasperated me beyond measure, I determined not to trouble about them for a few days.

The impression I made upon the table d’hôte was, I am afraid, one of gruff unsociability, although I tried hard to answer all questions addressed to me; but in vain did the doctor press me to go to the
salon
after dinner, a stuffy little room with a cottage piano out of tune, plush armchairs and a round table littered with touring advertisements. The doctor had a goat’s beard, watery blue eyes and a round little belly. He fed in a businesslike and very disgusting manner. His method of dealing with poached eggs was to give the yolk an underhand twist with a crust of bread which landed it whole, to the accompaniment of a juicy intake of saliva, into his wet, pink mouth. He used to gather, with gravy-soaked fingers, the bones left after the meat course on people’s plates, and wrap up his spoil anyhow, and thrust it into the pocket of his ample coat; by doing so he evidently aimed at being taken for an eccentric character:
“C’est pour les pauvres chiens
, for the poor dogs,” he would say (and says so still), “animals are often better than human beings”—an affirmation that provoked (and goes on doing so) passionate disputes, the abbé waxing especially hot. Upon learning that I was a German and a musician the doctor seemed quite fascinated;
and from the glances directed at me, I concluded that it was not so much my face (on its way from unshavenness to beardedness) which attracted attention, as my nationality and profession, in both of which the doctor perceived something distinctly favorable to the prestige of the house. He would buttonhole me on the stairs or in one of the long white passages, and start upon some endless gossiping, now discussing the social faults of the ham deputy, then deploring the abbé’s intolerance. It was all getting a little upon my nerves, although diverting after a fashion.

As soon as night fell and the shadows of branches, which a solitary lamp in the courtyard caught and lost, came sweeping across my room, a sterile and hideous confusion filled my vast vacant soul. Oh, no, I have never feared dead bodies, just as broken, shattered playthings do not frighten me. What I feared, all alone in a treacherous world of reflections, was to break down instead of holding on till a certain extraordinary, madly happy, all-solving moment which it was imperative I should attain; the moment of an artist’s triumph; of pride, deliverance, bliss: was my picture a sensational success or was it a dismal flop?

On the sixth day of my stay the wind became so violent that the hotel could be likened to a ship at sea in a tempest: windowpanes boomed, walls creaked; and the heavy evergreen foliage fell back with a receding rustle and then lurching forward, stormed the house. I attempted to go out into the garden, but at once was doubled up, retained my hat by a miracle and went up to my room. Once there, standing deep in thought at the window amid all that turmoil and tintinnabulation I failed to hear the gong, so that when I came down to lunch and took my seat at the table, the third course was in progress—giblets, mossy to the palate, with tomato
sauce—the doctor’s favorite dish. At first I did not heed the general conversation, skillfully guided by the doctor, but all of a sudden noticed that everyone was gazing at me.

“Et vous
—and you,” the doctor was saying to me, “what do you think upon this subject?”

“What subject?” I asked.

“We were speaking,” said the doctor, “of that murder,
chez vous
, in Germany. What a monster a man must be”—he went on, anticipating an interesting discussion—“to insure his life and then take another’s—”

I do not know what came over me, but suddenly I lifted my hand and said: “Look here, stop,” and, bringing it down, with my clenched fist I gave the table a bang that made the napkin ring jump into the air, and I cried, in a voice which I did not recognize as mine: “Stop, stop! How dare you, what right have you got? Of all the insulting—No, I won’t stand it! How dare you—Of my land, of my people … be silent! Be silent,” I cried ever louder: “You! … To dare tell me to my face that in Germany—Be silent!”

As it was, they had all been silent for a long time already—since that moment when, from the bang of my fist, the ring had started rolling. It rolled to the very end of the table; and was cautiously tapped down by the jeweler’s youngest son. A silence of exceptionally fine quality. Even the wind, I believe, had ceased booming. The doctor, holding his knife and fork, froze: a fly froze on his forehead. I felt a spasm in my throat; I threw down my napkin and left the dining room, with every face automatically turning to watch me pass.

Without pausing in my stride I grabbed the newspaper that lay outspread on a table in the hall and, once in my room, sank down upon my bed. I was trembling all over,
strangled by rising sobs, convulsed with fury; my knuckles were filthily splashed with tomato sauce. As I pored over the paper I still had time to tell myself that it was all nonsense, a mere coincidence—one could hardly expect Frenchmen to hear of the matter, but in a flash my name, my former name, came dancing before my eyes.…

I do not recall exactly what I learned from that particular paper: since then I have perused heaps of them, and they have got rather mixed up in my mind; they are now lying somewhere about, but I have not the leisure to sort them. What I well remember, however, was that I immediately grasped two facts: first, that the murderer’s identity was known, and second, that that of the victim was not. The communication did not proceed from a special correspondent, but was merely a brief summary of what, presumably, the German papers contained, and there was something careless and insolent about the fashion in which it was served up, between reports of a political fray and a case of psittacosis. And I was unspeakably shocked by the tone of the thing: it was in fact so improper, so impossible in regard to me, that for a moment I even thought it might refer to a person bearing the same name as I; for such a tone is used when writing of some halfwit hacking to bits a whole family. I understand now. It was, I guess, a ruse on the part of the international police; a silly attempt to frighten and rattle me; but not realizing this, I was, at first, in a frenzy of passion, and spots swam before my eyes which kept blundering into this or that line of the column—when suddenly there came a loud knock at the door. I shoved the paper under my bed and said: “Come in.”

It was the doctor. He was finishing chewing something.

“Ecoutez,”
he said, having hardly crossed the threshold—
“there has been a mistake. You have wrongly interpreted my meaning. I’d very much like—”

“Out!”—I roared—“out you go!”

His face changed and he went without closing the door. I jumped up and slammed it with an incredible crash. Then, from under the bed, I pulled out the paper; but now I could not find in it what I had just been reading. I examined it from beginning to end: nothing! Could I have
dreamt
reading it? I started looking through the pages afresh; it was like a nightmare when a thing gets lost, and not only can it not be discovered but there are none of those natural laws which would lend the search a certain logic, instead of which everything is absurdly shapeless and arbitrary. No, there was nothing about me in the paper. Nothing at all. I must probably have been in an awful state of blind excitement, because a few seconds later I noticed that the paper was an old German rag and not the Paris one which I had been reading. Diving under the bed again I retrieved it and reread the trivially worded, and even libelous, communication. Now it dawned upon me what had shocked me most—shocked me as an insult: not a word was there about our resemblance; not only was it not criticized (for instance they might have said, at least: “Yes, an admirable resemblance, yet such and such markings show it to be not his body”) but it was not mentioned at all—which left one with the impression that it was some wretch whose appearance was quite different from mine. Now, one single night could not very well have decomposed him; on the contrary his countenance ought to have acquired a marble quality, making our likeness still more sharply chiseled; but even if the body had been found quite a few days later, thus giving playful Death time to tamper with it, all the same the stages of its decomposition would
have tallied with mine—damned hasty way of putting it, I am afraid, but I am in no mood for niceties. This affected ignorance of what, to me, was most precious and all-important, struck me as an extremely cowardly trick, implying as it did that, from the very first, everybody knew perfectly well that it was not I, that it simply could not have entered anybody’s head to mistake the corpse for mine. And the slipshod way in which the story was told seemed, in itself, to stress a solecism which I could certainly never, never have committed; and still there they were, mouths hidden, and snouts turned away, silent, but all aquiver, the ruffians, bubbling over with joy, yes, with an evil vindictive joy; yes, vindictive, jeering, unbearable—

Again there came a knock; I sprang to my feet, gasping. The doctor and the manager appeared.
“Voilà,”
said the doctor in a deeply hurt voice addressing the manager and pointing at me. “There—that gentleman not only took offense at something I never said, but has now insulted me, refusing to hear me out and being extremely rude. Will you please talk to him. I am not used to such manners.”

“Il faut s’expliquer
—you must thrash it out,” said the manager glowering at me darkly. “I’m sure that monsieur himself—”

“Be gone!” I yelled, stamping my foot. “The things you are doing to me—It’s beyond—You dare not humiliate me and take revenge—I demand, do you hear, I demand—” The doctor and the manager, both with raised palms and in clockwork style prancing on stiff legs, started gibbering at me, strutting ever closer; I could not stand it any longer, my fit of passion passed, but in its stead I felt the pressure of tears, and suddenly (leaving victory to whoever sought it) I fell upon my bed and sobbed violently.

“Nerves, just nerves,” said the doctor, softening as if by magic.

The manager smiled and left the room, closing the door with great gentleness. The doctor poured out a glass of water for me, offered to bring a soothing drug, stroked my shoulder; and I sobbed on and was perfectly conscious of my condition, even saw with cold mocking lucidity its shame, and at the same time I felt all the Dusty-and-Dusky charm of hysterics and also something dimly advantageous to me, so I continued to shake and heave, as I wiped my cheeks with the large, dirty meat-smelling handkerchief which the doctor gave me, while he patted me and muttered soothingly:

“Only a misunderstanding!
Moi, qui dis toujours
 … I, with my usual saying that we’ve had our fill of wars … You’ve got your defects, and we’ve got ours. Politics should be forgotten. You’ve simply not understood what we were talking about. I was simply inquiring what you thought of that murder.…”

“What murder?” I asked through my sobs.

“Oh,
une sale affaire—a
beastly business: changed clothes with a man and killed him. But appease yourself, my friend, it is not only in Germany that murderers exist, we have our Landrus, thank heaven, so that you are not alone.
Calmezvous
, it is all nerves, the local water acts beautifully upon the nerves—or more exactly, upon the stomach,
ce qui revient au même, d’ailleurs.”

He went on with his patter for a little while and then rose. I returned the handkerchief with thanks.

“Know what?” he said when already standing in the doorway. “The little countess is quite infatuated with you. So you ought to play us something on the piano tonight” (he
ran his fingers in the semblance of a trill) “and believe me you’ll have her in your beddy.”