The Catalans: A Novel (27 page)

Authors: Patrick O'Brian

BOOK: The Catalans: A Novel

13.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

“Dear kind Alain: I love you too.”

I
T WAS WARM
in the hotel: outside, the mistral was driving sparse flecks of rain and sleet horizontally over the glistening black roadway and the people on the pavements were bowed wretchedly against it. By the force of contrast their room seemed even more agreeable when they came in from shopping; but even if it had been a calm and sunny day the room would still have charmed them. It was in a good hotel—good in the sense that the bed was comfortable and the people kind. Alain had said in the morning how much difference it made if the girl who brought the coffee smiled and said good day: and although the coffee was indifferent, he said he was happier there than at the Crillon or the Ritz.

They had spent the morning buying things, tropical clothes and books for the voyage, and the crowds, the hurrying in the streets, and the sense of shared activity had done them good. It had dissipated the dumb awkwardness and embarrassment that had threatened to envelop them entirely when the door of their room first closed behind them; and their lunch had brought back their poise—had given them an ordinary and agreeable level to live upon for the time.

It is almost impossible to be really happy at a time of very strong emotion, but now they were beginning to succeed: their voices were natural again, and they laughed. By a tacit understanding neither had mentioned Xavier that day, and now how many hundred things were overlying that unspoken name, taking away from its immediacy. And now the feeling of reality was seeping in—the feeling that the situation was
real,
so real that it could be touched and quite believed. For Madeleine it was as if she had been assured in the night that the sun would light the world; it was as if she had believed it, but only with her mind, not with her heart; and as if she had now just seen the first rim of the sun upon the eastern sky.

They were packing, slowly and without method: their bags were agape upon the bed and on the floor. A hairbrush and a rolled-up pair of socks, destined to be left for ever, propped open the wardrobe door.

She suddenly pressed a folded waistcoat to her bosom and looked at Alain’s back—a look of whole-hearted, concentrated love.

He was bent over an open suitcase, ramming down a pair of shoes. “In our garden,” he said, “there are snails. Immense snails. They come out when it rains. I adore snails.” He took the shoes out and looked absently at them. “But Tran-Lhoc will never cook them.”

“I can make a cargoulade,” she said, and Alain turned with a smile, an open smile and with so much pleasure in it at seeing her again after that moment of being turned away, that she felt her own smile spread in answer to it, and a wave of fondness pierced her heart.

The shining black and upright Renault had been standing a long time outside the hotel: soon the policeman would be coming back with his angry words and his parking regulations. Xavier leaned over the wheel to look up at the hotel again: an unpretentious little place, painted white and green. L’Hôtel de l’Extrème-Orient. Speak English. At least it did not look like a bawdyhouse.

How much longer would they be? They were only there for packing now, and there was not much time to spare.

The hotel porter looked at him again. He took three steps across the pavement toward the car. But again Xavier’s gray and haggard face, set in dark and savage lines, unshaved, menacing, and extreme, his rich and sober clothes, the Légion d’Honneur in his buttonhole, made the porter hesitate, stand thoughtfully and turn: the face, especially.

There was no other entrance: no, they must come out this way. But was it worth it, all this waiting in the cold? He had seen them going in—had found them in the last two hours before the sailing of the boat. He had seen their faces, laughing as they turned the glass revolving doors; and what had been the effect?
Nothing. Nothing of significance. Just the statement, There they
are.

All the way along the coast—that furious, unrelenting drive—his feelings had been clear enough. Black hate and rage, unmixed and plain: but had it not been conventional black raging, abstract hatred? Now (and he had seen them now) what was the truth in his mind? Was it only tiredness, hunger, and the cold that made this apathy? Alain had taken Madeleine from him; and was indifference the only thing he felt?

There was wounded vanity; frustration too, and the habit of revenge: but fundamentally what did he feel? Indifference, was it indifference? Was this cold and deadened sentiment indifference? It was like the ashes with the fire gone out.

And if it was, and if it was indifference, just mere indifference, then this was the end. If
now
he felt a cold dislike for her and him, if he had not the strength of feeling to hate them now, then all that he had felt had been a fraud: as Alain had said, a self-deception and a fraud. If there was no bloody hatred now, there had been no love before.

“Am I to blame, my God? Am I to blame?” he asked, and the hotel porter looked at him again.

“If I feel nothing now . .
.” He stared blankly through the glass. “If I regard her with indifference—no more than irritation, then it is the end. But what have I done? What have I done?”

If he was not responsible, where was the justice then? For if indifference was all his heart could feel, then he was dead. And if he had died, all feeling dead, and yet he had not killed himself, where was the crime? Whose responsibility? And if it was outside himself, what hope was there? He had loved with all his power: and where was that love now? A punishment without a crime: a final condemnation without foregoing wrong. He stared straight ahead, an appalled stare through the rain-flecked glass at nothing, then he covered his forehead with his hands.

But still the jet of fire might light again. When he saw them face to face, then it might blaze again and prove that he was still alive. They must be coming, must be coming: the boat was almost due.

He started the engine, made it hum, and the glass doors turned. He slid in the gear; was ready now. Yes, there they were; they bowed against the mistral as they reached the street, arms clasped, a suitcase in Alain’s other hand.

He would let them go a little way ahead, then quickly down to the quay before them: that was the best place, open and clear. The plan had charge: there was no reflection now.

“WHAT IS THE MATTER,
petit chou?” said Madeleine. It was almost the first endearment she had ventured, and the continuing rigidity of Alain’s arm made her wish it then unsaid.

“Nothing . . . nothing,” he said, with the lie apparent. “I was—I was wondering about my razor. But it is in the little bag. I remember now.”

He had seen Xavier’s car and Xavier’s back down the side street on the right. A shop clock showed the time—no time to waste at all. No cabs. The street running to the quay was dead, stone dead and cold.

Three cabs passed suddenly, filled with late and hurrying passengers. A glance—haggard—showed that they were no use to him.

Madeleine looked at his face. What had she done? Was he regretting it? It was decisive now, the boat and then no turning back. Was she pushing herself on him, being carried along on his pity? The doubt was like a hammer in her face. For a moment she thought she was going to faint: he was a stranger, and she could not speak.

As they crossed on the cobbles he gripped her arm, and she felt it go numb with pain, but the racing words hardly faltered in her head. Oh let it not be so, oh make it not be so, dear Mary Mother of God, pray make it not be so . . . The enormous roar of the siren almost engulfed the prayer.

They were on the quay, and Alain was hurrying her along, going brutally just in front, holding her as she stumbled on her unaccustomed high-heeled shoes.

“By God, we’ll take it as it stands,” said Alain, half aloud. Words of no significance: his mind meant he would smash all opposition down. How? Speed and thrust, the protection of the crowd; the power of will. No crowd. Only impatient sailors at the gangway’s foot. Sailors, and the figure that he knew.

H
E HAD LEFT
his car along the quay: he had seen three taxis send five men aboard. Now he was by the canvas-covered gangway, the only one: the only place. He shook his head to the question of a sailor and stood there, straight and dark, with his right hand in the pocket of his overcoat.

Here they were coming, hurrying fast along the quay: a sailor called again, and the last siren, hoarse and appalling in its nearness, filled the sky. They were hurrying: he could not see her face. A hundred yards to go, and already the sailors were busy with the gangway’s ropes, the bridge that joined the ship and shore. High up, on the top of the black cliff of the ship’s side, a tiny officer was shouting orders to the men.

They were coming nearer, nearer, half running, clasped together. Near enough now. Now near enough: now nearer still.

He turned away, filled with an indescribable weariness of soul. There they were: he did not care. The gesture he had planned would have no validity. He felt no hatred for them, not any trace of love, inverted love or plain: not even that remnant of affection that he might have hoped to find: only this immeasurable weariness, and emptiness, and cold. All passion far, far away and dead. But he did not care: he did not care: he could feel nothing very strongly any more.

The tall black cliff had moved: there was black water, a widening gulf of blackness, between the ship and quay. On the high deck there were white faces: and the bridge to the land, the gangplank, was rising, sliding itself into the side. The hole closed, and it was gone. There was no more bridge at all.

Printed in the United States of America

First published as a Norton paperback 2007.

Published in the UK under the title
The Frozen Flame
, 1953.

Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier

edition as follows: 53-7844

Manufacturing by Courier Westford

Book design by Chris Welch

Production manager: Anna Oler

ISBN 0-393-05110-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-393-24517-2 (e-book)

ISBN 978-0-393-32972-8 pbk.

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.