The Bachelors (14 page)

He watched her walk away with long strides down the wide avenue enveloped in the June sunlight, through which the buses sailed like liners on a torpid sea. She hailed a taxi, and as she stood there in the middle of the road with her hand raised and her feet together like a banderillero 'sighting' a bull from a distance, the vehicle came like a languid wave to expire at her feet. Returning to the house, M. de Coantré felt a weight in the right-hand pocket of his jacket. He put his hand inside and found it full of pebbles. While they were sitting in the garden talking, Mlle de Bauret had amused herself by quietly dropping gravel into his pocket. This girlish pleasantry delighted M. de Coantré, and the barometer was set fair when he went up to his room to devote himself to the important business of sleeping until five o'clock.

We must apologize for having spoken of Mlle de Bauret with a sort of shudder which is quite out of place in this narrative. But we were unable to suppress it.

For three months M. de Coantré had been marking time. M. Octave had recommended him to the organizer of one of those 'social' clubs where, under some pretext or other, a number of respectably dressed people who want to get on in the world are brought together and where, in return for one hundred francs a year, they are supposed to be able to 'make contacts' — the avowed aim of all the riff-raff of Paris. Gentlemen and crooks, adventurers and respectable, even prominent people, rub shoulders there in a promiscuousness which none of them find distasteful. The club in question was an 'aero-social' club, although nine-tenths of its members had never set foot in an aeroplane in their lives. It was run by an 'aero-social' gentleman who could not utter a word without mentioning 'my friend Foch' or 'my friend Painlevé' or 'the Aero-Club, where I'm a big shot'. This man thought M. de Coantré's title might impress some cretins, and made him the following proposition: that the noble count should have a fixed retainer of one hundred francs a month and twenty-five per cent of the subscriptions of the cretins he would bring into the club. M. de Coantré could not get away from him fast enough.

He put an advertisement in
l'Action française,
and M. Octave paid for another in
Le Temps:
'Bachelor, 50, well-educated, well-connected, responsible, seeks suitable employment. Moderate requirements.' The advertisement was sent in under Mélanie's surname. It is not surprising that Léon failed to realize the absurdity of this wording. But M. Octave! How are we to answer those sour people who tell us that half the people in responsible positions in any given society are not only imbeciles in the general sense of the word, but that they do not even know anything about their own line of business and have got there by the grace of God?

The advertisement in
Le Temps
brought him a letter offering him a job at twelve thousand francs a year on condition that he brought in one hundred and twenty thousand. Another letter, marked 'urgent' on the envelope, read more or less as follows: 'Why look for a job when for a tiny sum you can be a house-owner?' and was accompanied by a circular advertising a cheap housing scheme. Then there was a letter from a school on the outskirts of Paris where they wanted ushers for the beginning of term; board, lodging, and laundry and two hundred francs a month (three or four times less than a footman, for men into whose care the youth of France are entrusted). M. de Coantré, who would have been delighted to accept a job wrapping up parcels, trembled with shame at the thought of being an usher.

M. de Coantré could quite easily have found a job as a packer, or something of the sort. But it would have meant that the people he applied to took his wishes and tastes seriously instead of trying to find him something in the sphere in which they themselves would have looked if they were in his place. It would have meant that he himself knew which door to knock at. There is a book by Duhamel called
Les Hommes abandonnés.
He means the veterans of the war. But eight people out of ten — whatever their social position — are abandoned, lost, in peacetime — lost in big things as well as in small. Is there an air-line for such and such a town? What time do the planes leave? How to find a husband. What to do if one's neighbour has a fainting fit. Which monastery to retire to. How to protect the young against venereal disease. What we are looking for is always there, waiting for us. But always the same ignorance: where to look? And human beings! Somewhere our sighs are always echoed by another's. But we do not know where, and our thirst remains unquenched, and life goes by. Oh no! It is not only in war-time that men are 'abandoned '. It may seem a trite thing to say, but it must be said: the lack of connexions is one of the great misfortunes of society.

The last letter M. de Coantré received claimed to have the very thing he wanted, and gave him an address, and an appointment. But when the time came, he was so bored at the idea of shaving and dressing up and, never having been able to apply himself methodically to anything, he was already so tired of having to repeat what he called 'the same old patter', that he remained at Arago. It was Coantré Triplepatte again, the man who had skipped all those match-making interviews.

He wrote to an old cook who had worked for the family and was now living on her son's farm in Vendée. He offered to pay her one hundred and fifty francs a month (where would he get it? From the baron's pocket, no doubt) and help in the fields, in return for board and lodging. 'It will give you an extra pair of hands,' he naïvely explained. Her reply was a polite refusal.

In the meantime he had written to the director of his hospital, ostensibly to inquire about something but in fact to remind him of his existence. The answer he received began 'Sir . ..' He was so taken aback that he looked up the doctor's previous letter. It began 'Dear Sir . . .'What had he done in these three months to alienate the sympathy of this man? Gloomily he expunged the doctor's name from his address book.

It was exactly as in the war: attempts to break through without success. So now he gave up, convinced of the futility of his efforts and, moreover, persuaded that he had done what he could, that his conscience was clear, that such prodigious efforts had earned him the right to relax. The baron, for his part, had made up his mind to give up searching on his behalf. For he had been mortified, not only in his own eyes but in those of Léon, to find that he had failed; it might cast doubts on his power. However, since, every time they met, Léon told his uncle that he was 'constantly preoccupied' with his future and M. Octave told his nephew that he was 'mentioning it to everyone', neither of them was excessively worried, the one thinking 'Old Octave won't leave me in the lurch ', and the other 'He'll end up by getting hold of something. Better leave him to his own devices. He's a crank. He'll only be satisfied with what he finds himself.'

Of Léon's preoccupations and daily routine during the summer of 1924 one can get some idea by glancing at his diary, in which, in his splendid, magisterial handwriting, he would note, for example:

June 13. No Eugénie today [this was the charwoman].

Or:

June 17. Paid laundry-woman: 88 francs. Still owing to her: 0 fr. 60. Wished Mélanie many happy returns.

Or:

June 21. Saw old Octave. He said, 'You're bursting with rude health. I've never seen you looking so well.' I'll say!

Or:

June 26. Mélanie tells me Eugénie has been stealing our 'sparrows', [
Lumps of anthracite known as
têtes de moineau ('sparrows' heads')
] which she took away in a little bag slung between her legs.

He made frequent calls at the offices of the gas company, the inspector of taxes, the town hall, etc. For, since there were mistakes to his detriment in every bill he received from these organizations, and since these errors were accompanied by threats of frightful penalties if he failed to pay up within three days, he saw his gas being cut off or the bailiffs arriving, and could not rest until he had had it out direct with clerks who ridiculed him for having taken these official ultimatums literally. He could have telephoned, but he had never used a telephone in his life, and in any case did not know that one can telephone from any café.

At other times he consoled himself with his beloved gardening — the simplest gardening, a sort of horticultural pottering about, which consisted of weeding, trimming shrubs, mowing the lawn, clipping hedges. Always destroying, as with his own life; though it is true that whenever one comes upon professional gardeners at work they too are always cutting something down.

But M. de Coantré's favourite pastime nowadays was sleep. He had always loved to stretch himself out on his bed in the daytime. Sometimes he used to take up pencil and paper and pretend to be thinking up and noting down ideas concerning the amelioration of his financial situation — what he called 'making plans'. Sometimes he would lie there inert, thinking, 'At this hour people are going about their business, having to stick to a time-table,' and he would keep his mouth half-open as though better to demonstrate his own relaxation. But now, when he lay stretched out like this, he fell asleep, and it had become his ambition to sleep as long as possible during the afternoon. He even went so far as to order from Mélanie heavy dishes for preference, stews and thick soups, so that digestion would encourage sleep. He would wake at around four o'clock, yawning as though sleep had made him sleepy, his eyes watery, the creases of the pillow engraved on his cheek, and would say to himself: 'Well, another one gone!' (Ever since the decision had been taken to leave Arago, ticking off the days had become his chief pleasure. As each day passed he crossed it out in his pocket calendar, so eager was he to reach the date of departure. Sometimes his impatience was such that around noon he would delete the current day, as though it had already come to an end.) And then, at about six o'clock, he was overcome by a new wave of contentment, because the end of the day was at hand. By nine o'clock he was in bed.

A few days after the scene with Mlle de Bauret, M. de Coantré sold his piano for four hundred and twenty-five francs to a music shop in the neighbourhood. He was dazzled by these four bank-notes, but the baron told him that he could have sold the instrument for one thousand or one thousand two hundred francs: a Pleyel! At the time Léon also wanted to sell a collection of oddments: odd pieces of china, old flower-pots, fire-dogs, various scraps of ironmongery. Annoyed, he raised his price ludicrously high, asking two hundred francs from the second-hand dealer whom he had invited round. The woman burst out laughing but, sizing up her man, said in order to flatter him, 'You drive a hard bargain, M. de Coantré!' At which he preened himself but stuck to his guns. She offered him forty francs. Then his eyes flashed and he told her without more ado to be off.

'All right, fifty, as it's you.'

'Go away, I tell you!'

She went down the stairs insulting him: 'Count, eh? Count Flatpurse!' M. Élie, who had heard everything from his room, grunted with joy — 'Hrr . .. hrr . ..' — like an ant-eater in its cage when someone brings its feed. Such were Léon's outbursts of pride, as surprising and unexpected in the midst of his apathy as geysers in a calm sea. The following day he went to another second-hand dealer; but having arrived at the shop he was afraid to go in, and walked past. Then he came back, stopped, and looked in the window, but once again could not bring himself to go in. Returning to the house, he dropped these objects which he had been unable to sell one by one from his window into the garden, and with the aid of a shovel and a rake, smashed them to smithereens.

It was about this time that he received a letter from Bourdillon:

Dear Sir, Would you kindly call at the office one of these days? Meanwhile I hasten to inform you that the melancholy business which has preoccupied you for so long is well on the way to being settled.

Yours, etc.

On reading this, his face clouded over and he had a fit of anxiety — 'I foresee the worst' — like a peasant who, when you show him a clear sky, says, 'It bodes no good for tomorrow', or a nervous young woman on a liner that is in spanking form and apparently gliding along faster than usual, who says, 'We must be trying to get away from a storm.'

Since the scene which we described between M. de Coantré, Bourdillon and Lebeau, M. de Coantré's comings and goings to and from the lawyer's office had not ceased. Some title deeds had to be sold — an operation which took a long time because of the red tape that accompanied it, and which was a splendid source of agitation for our count — not to mention a number of other transactions of this sort, which it would be too boring to recount, and in any case unnecessary, since the reader has seen enough of M. de Coantré face to face with money problems.

On this July afternoon, then, Bourdillon informed M. de Coantré that they had only to wait for a few more paper formalities, and the presence of Mlle de Bauret, before proceeding to wind up the estate, and that he could therefore relax, since it was unlikely that any new hitch would arise.

On leaving the office, M. de Coantré called on the baron to tell him the good news. After chatting for twenty minutes, M. de Coëtquidan excused himself and left the room, saying he had something to tell Papon. When he came back, they had hardly exchanged a word when he suddenly pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Léon.

'I haven't forgotten it's your birthday on the 13th. Here's a little something to buy yourself a present with. . . .'

His face had gone purple, and he immediately added, to cut short his nephew's effusions:

'Have you seen the new café they've just opened next door? Those coloured parasols look extremely attractive. How inventive people are these days. . . .' etc., etc.

When he reached the landing, M. de Coantré opened the envelope and found, together with a card on which the baron had simply inscribed the date of his nephew's birth, a five-hundred-franc note. He was wafted on to the pavement on wings of joy.

O men and women of Paris, those lives of yours, bitter, wearisome, frantic with struggle! But on this 11 July it was Paris in slow motion: people would be going away in three weeks, and showed that they had already left in spirit by taking things easy, like the clerk who puts down his pen and stops work at five to eleven because he is due to leave the office at 11.30. With this unexpected banknote in his pocket, and the blissful knowledge that the Lebeau affair was over, Léon experienced a sensation that was quite new to him: a decided reluctance to go straight home to Arago. Instead of going to catch the bus at the Gare St Lazare as he usually did, he strolled towards the boulevards, enjoying everything he saw as though it were for the first time.