Four Novels (30 page)

This is the first time that Mr. Andesmas has seen this house bought by him for Valérie. Without seeing it, just because she wanted it, he had bought it for her, for Valérie, his daughter, a few weeks before.

As the whole wicker armchair creaked, Mr. Andesmas examined the place chosen by Valérie. The house was small but the land around it was flat. One could easily enlarge it on three sides whenever Valérie expressed the desire.

“My room, you’ll see, will open onto the terrace. That’s where I’ll eat my breakfast, in the morning.”

Valérie, in her nightgown, will therefore soon be looking at the sea, to her heart’s content, from the moment she wakes up. Sometimes the sea will be calm, as it is today.

When our hope is here every day

When our hope is here forever . . .

Every twenty minutes, approximately, the melody begins again with greater and greater force, more devastating, strengthened by its regular repetition. And then the square dances, dances, dances, all of it.

Sometimes, the sea would be foamy and sometimes, even, it would disappear in the fog. At times it would also be purple, swollen, and there would be storms that would frighten Valérie from the terrace.

And Mr. Andesmas is afraid for his child Valérie, for his love of her rules without pity over his declining fate; afraid she will be frightened by the storms to come when, waking up, on this terrace over the sea, she finds them raging in all their fury.

There must be lots of young people in the village square. On the banks of the pond, deserted, even by that gadabout dog, weren’t there flowers in full bloom which tomorrow would be fading? Valérie should go to her pond and look at her flowers. A short cut would take her there, in a minute. One could undoubtedly buy this pond, for very little. Valérie was right to want it for herself. Valérie, it seemed, still laughed
at frogs swimming across the surface of ponds, didn’t she? Valérie, it seemed, still thought it was funny to hold them in her hand? still laughed at terrifying them like that? Mr. Andesmas no longer really knew. Even if the age for torturing them had passed, wasn’t she still amused by them in another way, by holding their life locked up in her hand and by their terror? Mr. Andesmas no longer knows at all.

“Michel Arc,” the girl said, “asked me to tell you that he’d be here soon.”

Mr. Andesmas hadn’t seen her come. Could he have dozed off as she was approaching? He discovered her all of a sudden, standing on the plateau, at the same distance as the reddish dog. If he had dozed off, was it while she was approaching or even somewhat earlier?

“Thank you,” Mr. Andesmas said, “thank you for coming.”

The girl, at this respectful distance, examined the massive body, imprisoned in the wicker armchair, the massive body she was seeing for the first time. She must have heard them speak of it in the village. Below the very ancient, smiling and bare head, the body was richly covered with beautiful dark clothes, meticulously clean. You could see the immense shape only vaguely, it was very decently covered by these beautiful clothes.

“So, he is going to come?” Mr. Andesmas asked in a friendly tone of voice.

She nodded that he would come, yes. She was already so tall that it was only because of the improper way she stared at him that Mr. Andesmas realized she was still a child.

Beneath her black hair, her eyes seemed light. Her face was small, rather pale. Her eyes slowly became accustomed to the sight of Mr. Andesmas. They left him and surveyed the surroundings. Did she know the place? Probably. She must have come here with other children, and even as far as the pond—that pond where soon she would no longer be coming—she must have come. There, no doubt, before, the children of this village and those of the distant hamlets behind the hill must have met.

She was waiting. Mr. Andesmas made an effort, moved in his armchair, and took a franc piece out of his vest pocket. He held it out to her. It was also the way she came up to him and very simply took the coin that confirmed his impression that she was still a child.

“Thank you, Mister, Mr. Andesmas.”

“Oh, you know my name,” Mr. Andesmas said softly.

“Michel Arc, he’s my father.”

Mr. Andesmas smiled at the child by way of greeting. She smiled a polite little smile.

“What should I tell him you said?” she asked.

Taken by surprise, Mr. Andesmas looked for something to say, and found this.

“It’s still early, after all, but if he could come soon, it would be very kind of him.”

They both smiled at each other again, pleased with this answer, as if it had been the perfect one the child had been waiting for and as if Mr. Andesmas had guessed it by wanting to be nice to her.

Instead of leaving, she went to sit on the edge of the terrace-to-be and looked at the chasm.

The music was still drifting up.

The child listened for a few minutes, and then she played at taking the hem of her dress—a blue dress—pulling it down over her folded legs, lifting it again and pulling it down again, several times.

And then, she yawned.

When she turned toward Mr. Andesmas, he noticed that her whole body started, briefly, and that her hands flew apart and dropped the franc piece.

She did not pick it up.

“I’m a little tired,” she declared. “But I’m going down to tell my father what you told me.”

“Oh, I have plenty of time, plenty of time, why don’t you rest,” Mr. Andesmas begged her.

When the lilac blooms my love

Together, they listened to the song. With the second verse, the child began to sing also in a thin, uncertain voice, her head still turned toward the chasm of light, completely forgetful of the old man’s presence. Although the music was loud, Mr. Andesmas listened only to the childish voice. At his age, he knew how not to make his presence bothersome, ever, to anyone, particularly children. Turned away from him, marking the rhythm like a schoolgirl, she sang the whole song.

When the song was over, a clamor arose. Just as, every time it ended, there were shouts of men and girls reveling in it, happy. They requested it a second time, but it didn’t come back. Silence, near silence, strangely took hold of the square, laughter and shouting almost stopped,
having run their course, exhausted, overwhelmed by their own flow. Then the child whistled the tune. It was a sharper, slower whistling than it should have been. She probably wasn’t old enough to dance yet. She was whistling, with strained application, badly. It pierces the forest and the listener’s heart, but the child doesn’t hear herself. Valérie whistles in the corridors, wonderfully, except during her father’s siestas. Where have you learned to whistle so well, my little Valérie? She cannot tell.

When she had reached the end of the song, the child scanned the village square, for a fairly long time, then turned toward Mr. Andesmas, this time without fear. On the contrary, she had a happy look. So, then, perhaps she was calling for a compliment that didn’t come? Perhaps she hadn’t forgotten this old man’s presence as much as one might have thought? Why such joy? The happy look lasted, fixed, then suddenly it faded into an immobile and unjustified solemnity.

“You whistle well,” Mr. Andesmas said. “Where did you learn.”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at Mr. Andesmas questioningly, and asked:

“Shall I go? Shall I go down?”

“Oh, take your time,” Mr. Andesmas protested, “take all the time you want, why don’t you rest. You’ve lost your franc piece.”

Perhaps she was intrigued by so much concern. She picked up the coin, and once again examined the impressive bulk which seemed thoroughly at rest, squeezed into the armchair—in the shade of the white wall of the house. Was she hoping to find some sign of impatience in those trembling hands, in that smile?

Mr. Andesmas tried to find something to say to distract her from this spectacle, but finding nothing, he remained silent.

“But I’m not that tired, you know,” the child said.

She turned her eyes away.

“Oh, you have all the time in the world,” Mr. Andesmas said.

Smiles no longer registered naturally on Mr. Andesmas’ face. Except when Valérie would appear in the frame of the French door which opened on to the garden, and when an uncontrollable, animal-like joy would break through, crisscrossing his whole face, Mr. Andesmas only smiled when he seemed to remember that social conventions called for it, and he could only do it with difficulty, pretending just enough to give the impression of being a good-humored old man.

“You have all the time in the world, I assure you,” he repeated.

The child, standing up, seemed to be thinking.

“Then I’ll go for a walk,” she decided. “In case my father comes, I’ll go back with him by car.”

“There’s a pond, over there,” Mr. Andesmas said, his left arm pointing at Valérie’s future forest.

She knew that.

She walked off toward the top of the hill, where the reddish dog had come from. She walked awkwardly on her skinny, nearly shapeless legs, bird’s legs, while the old man looked on, smiling with approval. He watched her until he could no longer see anything of her, nothing, not one speck of her blue dress, and then once again he found himself in the state of abandonment whose disconcerting vastness she had only emphasized through her appearance, no matter how discreet.

On the sunny plateau her dress had been very blue. Closing his eyes, Mr. Andesmas recaptures the exact shade, while he already has difficulty recalling the color, reddish, of the dog who preceded her.

He is suddenly sorry he encouraged her to leave. He calls her back.

“And what is your father doing?” he asks.

While up until then she had acted disgusted, but respectful, before so much old age, she now becomes insolent. A shout comes back, piercing, exasperated, from the forest.

“He’s dancing.”

Mr. Andesmas’ waiting began again.

Oddly enough it was at first calmer, more patient than a moment before.

He stares at the chasm of light. At this altitude the sea is almost the same blue as the sky, he notices. He stands up to stretch his legs and to have a better look at the sea.

He stands up, takes three steps toward the chasm, filled with a light already turning yellow, and he sees as he had expected, beside the green benches of the village square, in the shade of the trees, Valérie’s black car parked.

And then he walks back to his armchair, sits down again, again considers his bulk, in the dark clothes, sunk in this armchair, and it is while he is preparing to wait still longer for Michel Arc, and, also, for the return of the child, an expected, foreseen return; it is then, during this interlude, that Mr. Andesmas will know the terrors of death.

Having sat back sensibly, ready to accept Michel Arc’s delay, reduced by his own choice to a complete indulgence of any slights to
himself, at the very moment when the memory of Valérie returns to him even though she is so near—her black car is there on the white rectangle of the square—Mr. Andesmas knows the terrors of death.

Was it from having watched the child walk on the path, her frail way of stepping on the pine needles? from having imagined her solitude in the forest? her somewhat frightened running toward the pond? from remembering her submissiveness, that devotion to the duty her father had imposed upon her to inform this old man whose sight had sickened her, a devotion which had in the end marvelously exploded into insolence?

Mr. Andesmas believes he is overwhelmed by the longing he feels to love this other child and by his inability to have his feelings follow this desire.

When he recounted this episode in his endless old age, he claimed it was from the moment the little girl started off toward the top of this deserted hill, from the exasperating daintiness of her walk which was taking her to the pond where he knew Valérie would no longer go alone, that he felt this desire that day. That day, he wanted one last time to change his feelings in favor of this child who was going to the pond, with an intensity as brutal, as urgent, he said, as the desire, the mortal passion he had felt, years ago, for a certain woman.

But while he wants this so much, he suddenly recalls the smell of Valérie’s hair when she was a child and his eyes close with suffering at this impotence, the last in his life. But is it the forest which hides in its depths, flowers he hasn’t seen and which a breeze carries to him? Is it the enduring perfume of this other child who has gone, which he hadn’t noticed when she was there?—now the memory comes back to him of the scented magnificence of his child’s hair, and how, in advance, the infernal memory of a blondness which soon, in this very house, will perfume the sleep of a still unknown man.

An insinuating heaviness slowly penetrates Mr. Andesmas, it takes hold of his limbs, of his whole body, and slowly reaches his mind. His hands become lead on the arms of his chair and his head grows remote to itself, gives in to a despair never experienced before, at the thought of going on.

Mr. Andesmas tries to struggle and to tell himself that this very long wait for Michel Arc, without moving, in this heat, he must admit, is disastrous for his health But it doesn’t help. The insinuating heaviness penetrates still farther, deeper, more and more discouraging and
unknown. Mr. Andesmas tries to stem it, to stop its intrusion within him, but it engulfs him more and more

It now rules over his whole life, settled there, for the time being, a prowler asleep on its victory.

The whole time it is there and sleeping. Mr. Andesmas tries to love that other child whom he can no longer love.

The whole time it is there and sleeping, Mr. Andesmas tries to confront the memory of Valérie who is the-e, down below, in the white square, and who has forgotten him.

“I’m going to die,” Mr. Andesmas said aloud.

But this time he does not give a start. He hears his voice in the same way he heard it say that the wind was rising, awhile before, but it does not surprise him since it is the voice of a man he does not recognize, a man unable to love that child at the pond.