The Counterfeiters (21 page)

The journey was rather troublesome, because Laura got very tired and her condition (she’s in her third month) necessitated a great deal of care; and the place where we had settled to go (it would be too long to explain why) is rather difficult to get at. Besides, Laura very often made things more complicated by refusing to take precautions; she had to be forced; she kept repeating that an accident was the best thing that could happen to her. You can imagine how we fussed over her. Oh, Olivier, how wonderful she is! I don’t feel the same as I did before I knew her, and there are thoughts which I no longer dare put into words and impulses which I check, because I should be ashamed not to be worthy of her. Yes, really, when one is with her, one feels forced, as it were, to think nobly. That doesn’t prevent the conversation between the three of us from being very free—Laura isn’t at all prudish—and we talk about anything; but I assure you that when I am with her, there are heaps of things I don’t feel inclined to scoff at any more and which seem to me now very serious.

You’ll be thinking I’m in love with her. Well, old boy, you aren’t far wrong. Crazy, isn’t it? Can you imagine me in love with a woman who is going to have a child, whom
naturally I respect and wouldn’t venture to touch with my finger-tip? Hardly on the road to becoming a rake, am I? …

When we reached Saas-Fée, after no end of difficulties (we had a carrying chair for Laura, as it’s impossible to get here by driving), we found there were only two rooms available in the hotel—a big one with two beds, and a little one, which it was settled with the hotel-keeper should be for me—for Laura passes as Edouard’s wife, so as to conceal her identity; but every night she sleeps in the little room and I join Edouard in his. Every morning there’s a regular business carrying things backwards and forwards, for the sake of the servants. Fortunately the two rooms communicate, so that makes it easier.

We’ve been here six days; I didn’t write to you sooner because I was rather in a state of bewilderment to begin with, and I had to get straight with myself. I am only just beginning to find my bearings.

Edouard and I have already done one or two little excursions in the mountains. Very amusing; but to tell the truth, I don’t much care for this country. Edouard doesn’t either. He says the scenery is “declamatory.” That’s exactly it.

The best thing about the place is the air—virgin air, which purifies one’s lungs. And then we don’t want to leave Laura alone for too long at a time, for of course she can’t come with us. The company in the hotel is rather amusing. There are people of all sorts of nationalities. The person we see most of is a Polish woman doctor, who is spending the holidays here with her daughter and a little boy she is in charge of. In fact, it’s because of this little boy that we have come here. He’s got a kind of nervous illness, which the doctor is treating according to a new method. But what does the little fellow most good (he’s really a very attractive little thing) is that he’s madly in love with the doctor’s daughter, who is a year or two older than he and the prettiest creature I have ever seen in my life. They never leave each other from morning till night. And they are so charming together that no one ever thinks of chaffing them.

I haven’t worked much and not opened a book since I left; but I’ve thought a lot. Edouard’s conversation is extraordinarily interesting. He doesn’t speak to me much personally, though he pretends to treat me as his secretary;
but I listen to him talking to the others; especially to Laura, with whom he likes discussing his ideas. You can’t imagine how much I learn by it. There are days when I say to myself that I ought to take notes; but I think I can remember it all. There are days when I long for you madly; I say to myself that it’s you who ought to be here; but I can’t be sorry for what’s happened to me, nor wish for anything to be different. At any rate, you may be sure that I never forget it’s thanks to you that I know Edouard and that it’s to you I owe my happiness. When you see me again, I think you’ll find me changed; I remain, nevertheless, and more faithfully and devotedly than ever

Your friend.

P.S.
Wednesday
. We have this moment come back from a tremendous expedition. Climbed the Hallalin—guides, ropes, glaciers, precipes, avalanches, etc. Spent the night in a refuge in the middle of the snows, packed in with other tourists; needless to say we didn’t sleep a wink. The next morning we started before dawn.… Well, old boy, I’ll never speak ill of Switzerland again. When one gets up there, out of sight of all culture, of all vegetation, of everything that reminds one of the avarice and stupidity of men, one feels inclined to shout, to sing, to laugh, to cry, to fly, to dive head foremost into the sky, or to fall on one’s knees. Yours

Bernard.

Bernard was much too spontaneous, too natural, too pure—he knew too little of Olivier, to suspect the flood of hideous feelings his letter would raise in his friend’s heart—a kind of tidal wave, in which pique, despair and rage were mingled. He felt himself supplanted in Bernard’s affection and in Edouard’s. The friendship of his two friends left no room for his. One sentence in particular of Bernard’s letter tortured him—a sentence which Bernard would never have written had he imagined all that Olivier read into it: “In the same room,” he repeated to himself—and the serpent of jealousy unrolled its abominable coils and writhed in his heart. “They sleep in the same room!” What did
he not imagine? His mind filled with impure visions which he did not even try to banish. He was not jealous in particular either of Edouard or of Bernard; but of the two. He pictured each of them in turn or both simultaneously, and at the same time envied them. He received the letter one forenoon. “Ah! so that’s how it is.… ” he kept saying to himself all the rest of the day. That night the fiends of hell inhabited him. Early next morning he rushed off to Robert’s. The Comte de Passavant was waiting for him.

I have had no difficulty in finding little Boris. The day after our arrival, he appeared on the hotel terrace and began looking at the mountains through a telescope which stands outside, mounted on a swivel for the use of the tourists. I recognized him at once. A little girl, rather older than Boris, joined him after a short time. I was sitting near by in the drawing-room, of which the French window was standing open, and I did not lose a word of their conversation. Though I wanted very much to speak to him, I thought it more prudent to wait till I could make the acquaintance of the little girl’s mother—a Polish woman doctor, who is in charge of Boris and keeps very careful watch over him. Little Bronja is an exquisite creature; she must be about fifteen. She wears her fair hair in two thick plaits, which reach to her waist; the expression of her eyes and the sound of her voice are more angelic than human. I write down the two children’s conversation:

“Boris, Mamma had rather we didn’t touch the telescope. Won’t you come for a walk?”

“Yes, I will. No, I won’t.”

The two contradictory sentences were uttered in the same breath. Bronja only answered the second:

“Why not?”

“Because it’s too hot, it’s too cold.” He had come away from the telescope.

“Oh, Boris, do be nice! You know Mamma would like us to go out. Where’s your hat?”

“Vibroskomenopatof. Blaf blaf.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why do you say it?”

“So that you shouldn’t understand.”

“If it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t matter about not understanding it.”

“But if it did mean something, anyhow you wouldn’t be able to understand.”

“When one talks it’s in order to be understood.”

“Shall we play at making words in order to understand them only us?”

“First of all, try to speak good grammar.”

“My mamma can speak French, English, Roumanian, Turkish, Polish, Italoscope, Perroquese and Xixitou.”

All this was said very fast, in a kind of lyrical ecstasy. Bronja began to laugh.

“Oh, Boris, why are you always saying things that aren’t true?”

“Why do you never believe what I say?”

“I believe it when it’s true.”

“How do you know when it’s true? I believed
you
the other day when you told me about the angels. I say, Bronja, do you think that, if I were to pray very hard, I should see them too?”

“Perhaps you’ll see them if you get out of the habit of telling lies, and if God wants to show them to you; but God won’t show them to you if you pray to him only for that. There are heaps of beautiful things we should see if we weren’t too naughty.”

“Bronja, you aren’t naughty; that’s why you can see the angels. I shall always be naughty.”

“Why don’t you try not to be? Shall we go to—” some place whose name I didn’t know—“and pray together to God and the Blessèd Virgin to help you not to be naughty?”

“Yes. No; listen—let’s take a stick; you shall hold one end and I the other. I will shut my eyes, and I promise not to open them until we get to the place.”

They walked away, and as they were going down the terrace steps I heard Boris again:

“Yes, no, not that end. Wait till I’ve wiped it.”

“Why?”

“I’ve touched it.”

Mme. Sophroniska came up to me as I was sitting alone, just finishing my early breakfast and wondering how I could enter into conversation with her. I was surprised to see that she was holding my last book in her hand; she asked me with the most affable smile whether it was the author whom she had the pleasure of speaking to; then she immediately launched upon a long appreciation of my book. Her judgment—both praise and criticism—seemed to me more intelligent than what I am accustomed to hearing, though her point of view is anything but literary. She told me she was almost exclusively interested in questions of psychology and in anything that may shed a new light on the human soul. “But how rare it is,” she added, “to find a poet, or dramatist or novelist, who is not satisfied with a ready-made psychology—” the only kind, I told her, that satisfies their readers.

Little Boris has been confided to her for the holidays by his mother. I took care not to let her know my reasons for being interested in him.

“He is very delicate,” said Mme. Sophroniska. “His mother’s companionship is not at all good for him. She wanted to come to Saas-Fée with us, but I would only consent to look after the child on condition that she left him entirely to my care; otherwise it would be impossible to answer for his being cured. Just imagine,” she went on, “she keeps the poor little thing in a state of continual excitement—the very thing to develop the
worst kind of nervous troubles in him. She has been obliged to earn her living since his father’s death. She used to be a pianist and, I must say, a marvellous performer; but her playing was too subtle to please the ordinary public. She decided to take to singing at concerts, at casinos—to go on the stage. She used to take Boris with her to her dressing-room; I believe the artificial atmosphere of the theatre greatly contributed to upset the child’s balance. His mother is very fond of him, but to tell the truth it is most desirable that he shouldn’t live with her.”

“What is the matter with him exactly?” I asked.

She began to laugh:

“Is it the name of his illness you want to know? Oh, you wouldn’t be much the wiser if I were to give you a fine scientific name for it.”

“Just tell me what he suffers from.”

“He suffers from a number of little troubles, tics, manias, which are the sign of what people call a ‘nervous child,’ and which are usually treated by rest, open air and hygiene. It is certain that a robust organism would not allow these disturbances to show themselves. But if debility favours them, it does not exactly cause them. I think their origin can always be traced to some early shock, brought about by a circumstance it is important to discover. The sufferer, as soon as he becomes conscious of this cause, is half cured. But this cause, more often than not, escapes his memory, as if it were concealing itself in the shadow of his illness; it is in this refuge that I look for it, so as to bring it out into the daylight—into the field of vision, I mean. I believe that the look of a clear-sighted eye cleanses the mind, as a ray of light purifies infected water.”

I repeated to Sophroniska the conversation I had overheard the day before, from which it appeared to me that Boris was very far from being cured.

“It’s because I am far from knowing all that I need
to know of Boris’s past. It’s only a short while ago that I began my treatment.”

“Of what does it consist?”

“Oh, simply in letting him talk. Every day I spend one or two hours with him. I question him, but very little. The important thing is to gain his confidence. I know a good many things already. I divine a good many others. But the child is still on the defensive; he is ashamed; if I insisted too strongly, tried to force his confidence too quickly, I should be going against the very thing I want to arrive at—a complete surrender. It would set his back up. So long as I shall not have vanquished his reserve, his modesty …”

An inquisition of this kind seemed to me so much in the nature of an assault that it was with difficulty I refrained from protesting; but my curiosity carried the day.

“Do you mean that you expect the child to make you any shameful revelations?”

It was she who protested.

“Oh, shameful? There’s no more shame in it than allowing oneself to be sounded. I need to know everything and particularly what is most carefully hidden. I must bring Boris to make a complete confession; until I can do that, I shall not be able to cure him.”

“You suspect then that he has a confession to make? Are you quite sure—forgive me—that you won’t yourself suggest what you want him to confess?”

“That is a preoccupation which must never leave me, and it is for that reason I work so slowly. I have seen clumsy magistrates who have unintentionally prompted a child to give evidence that was pure invention from beginning to end, and the child, under the pressure of the magistrate’s examination, tells lies in perfect good faith and makes people believe in entirely imaginary misdeeds. My part is to suggest nothing. Extraordinary patience is needed.”