Things and A Man Asleep (2 page)

Your eye, first of all, would glide over the grey fitted carpet in the narrow, long and high-ceilinged corridor. Its walls would be cupboards, in light-coloured wood, with fittings of gleaming brass. Three prints, depicting, respectively, the Derby winner Thunderbird, a paddle-steamer named
Ville-de-Motitereau,
and a Stephenson locomotive, would lead to a leather curtain hanging on thick, black, grainy wooden rings which would slide back at the merest touch. There, the carpet would give way to an almost yellow woodblock floor, partly covered by three faded rugs.

It would be a living room about twenty-three feet long by ten feet wide. On the left, in a kind of recess, there would be a large sofa upholstered in worn black leather, with pale cherrywood bookcases on either side, heaped with books in untidy piles. Above the sofa, a mariner's chart would fill the whole length of that section of the wall. On the other side of a small low table, and beneath a silk prayer-mat nailed to the wall with three large-headed brass studs, matching the leather curtain, there would be another sofa, at right angles to the first, with a light-brown velvet covering; it would lead on to a small and spindly piece of furniture, lacquered in dark red and providing three display shelves for knick-knacks: agates and stone eggs, snuffboxes, candy-boxes, jade ashtrays, a mother-of-pearl oystershell, a silver fob watch, a cut-glass glass, a crystal pyramid, a miniature in an oval frame. Further on, beyond a padded door, there would be shelving on both sides of the corner, for caskets and for records, beside a closed gramophone of which only four machined-steel knobs would be visible, and above it, a print depicting
The Great Parade of the Military Tattoo.
Through the window, draped with white and brown curtains in cloth imitating Jouy wallpaper, you would glimpse a few trees, a tiny park, a bit of street. A roll-top desk littered with papers and pen-holders would go with a small cane-seated chair. On a console table would be a telephone, a leather diary, a writing pad. Then, on the other side of another door, beyond a low, square revolving bookcase supporting a large, cylindrical vase decorated in blue and filled with yellow roses, set beneath an oblong mirror in a mahogany frame, there would be a narrow table with its two benches upholstered in tartan, which would bring your eye back to the leather curtain.

It would be all in browns, ochres, duns and yellows: a world of slightly dull colours, in carefully graded shades, calculated with almost too much artistry, in the midst of which would be some striking, brighter splashes - a cushion in almost garish orange, a few multicoloured book jackets amongst the leather-bound volumes. During the day, the light flooding in would make this room seem a little sad, despite the roses. It would be an evening room. But in the winter, with the curtains drawn, some spots illuminated - the bookcase corner, the record shelves, the desk, the low table between the two settees, and the vague reflections in the mirror — and large expanses in shadow, whence all the things would gleam - the polished wood, the rich, heavy silks, the cut glass, the softened leather — it would be a haven of peace, a land of happiness.

The first door would open onto a bedroom, its floor covered with a light-coloured fitted carpet. An English double bed would fill the whole rear part of it. On the right, to both sides of the window, there would be tall and narrow sets of shelves holding a few books, to be read and read again, photograph albums, packs of cards, pots, necklaces, paste jewellery. To the left, an old oak wardrobe and two clothes horses of wood and brass would stand opposite a small wing-chair upholstered in thin-striped grey silk and a dressing table. Through a half-open door giving on to a bathroom you would glimpse thick bathrobes, swan-neck taps in solid brass, a large adjustable mirror, a pair of cut-throat razors and their green leather sheaths, bottles, horn-handled brushes, sponges. The bedroom walls would be papered with chintz; the bedspread would be a tartan blanket. A bedside table, with an openwork copper band running round three of its sides, would support a silver candlestick lamp topped with a very pale grey silk shade, a square carriage clock, a rose in a stem- vase, and, on its lower shelf, folded newspapers and some magazines. Further on, at the foot of the bed, there would be a big pouf in natural hide. At the window, the gauze curtains would slide on brass rods; the thick woollen double curtains would be half drawn. In the half-light the room would still be bright. On the wall, above the bed made up and turned down for the night, between two small wall lamps, the astonishing, long, narrow black-and-white photograph of a bird in the sky would surprise you by its slightly formal perfection.

The second door would reveal a study. From top to bottom the walls would be lined with books and periodicals with, here and there, so as to break the continuity of bindings and jackets, a number of prints, drawings and photographs - Antonello da Messina's
Saint Jerome
, a detail from
The Triumph of Saint George
, one of Piranesi's dungeons, a portrait by Ingres, a little pen-and-ink landscape by Klee, a sepia-tint photograph of Renan in his room at the Collège de France, a Steinberg department store, Cranach's
Melanchthon
- pinned to wooden panels set into the shelving. Slightly to the left of the window and at a shallow angle would be a long country table covered with a large red blotter. Wooden boxes, flat pen-holders and pots of all kinds would hold pencils, paper-clips, staples large and small. A glass tile would serve as an ashtray. A circular black leather box decorated with gold-leaf arabesques would be filled with cigarettes. Light would come from an old desk-lamp, adjustable only with difficulty, fitted with a green opaline lampshade shaped like a visor. On each side of the table, virtually facing each other, would be two high-backed wood and leather armchairs. Still further to the left, along the wall, would be a narrow table overflowing with books. A wing-chair in bottle-green leather would lead to grey metal filing cabinets and light wooden card-index boxes. On a third, even smaller table would be a Swedish lamp and a typewriter under its canvas dust-cover. Right at the back would be a narrow bed covered in ultramarine velvet and stacked with cushions of all colours. On a painted wooden stand, almost in the middle of the room, there would be a globe made of papier-mâché and nickel silver, illustrated in naïf style, a fake antique. Behind the desk, half-hidden by the red curtain at the window, would be an oiled-wood ladder which could slide on a brass rail all the way round the room.

There, life would be easy, simple. All the servitudes, all the problems brought by material existence would find a natural solution. A cleaning lady would come every morning. Every fortnight, wine, oil and sugar would be delivered. There would be a huge, bright kitchen with blue tiles decorated with heraldic emblems, three china plates decorated with yellow arabesques in metallic paint, cupboards everywhere, a handsome whitewood table in the middle with stools and bench-seats. It would be pleasant to come and sit there, every morning, after a shower, scarcely dressed. On the table there would be a sizeable stoneware butter dish, jars of marmalade, honey, toast, grapefruit cut in two. It would be early. It would be May, the start of a long summer's day.

They would open the mail, they would open the newspapers. They would light their first cigarette. They would go out. Their work would keep them busy for a few hours only, in the morning. They would meet for lunch, a sandwich or a steak, according to their mood; they would have coffee at a street café and then go home, on foot, slowly.

Their flat would rarely be tidy, but its very untidiness would be its greatest charm. They would hardly bother themselves with it: they would live in it. The comfort of their surroundings would seem to them to be an established fact, a datum, a state of their nature. Their attention would be elsewhere: on the book they would open, on the text they would draft, on the record they would listen to, on their dialogue engaged afresh each day. They would work for a long while. Then they would dine, or go out for dinner; they would see old friends; they would walk together.

Sometimes it would seem to them that a whole life could be led harmoniously between these book-lined walls, amongst these objects so perfectly domesticated that they would have ended up believing these bright, soft, simple and beautiful things had only ever been made for their sole use. But they wouldn't feel enslaved by them: on some days, they would go off on a chance adventure. No plan seemed impossible to them. They would not know rancour, or bitterness, or envy. For their means and their desires would always match in all ways. They would call this balance happiness and, with their freedom, with their wisdom and their culture, they would know how to retain and to reveal it in every moment of their living, together.

II

They would have liked to be rich. They believed they would have been up to it. They would have known how to dress, how to look and how to smile like rich people. They would have had the requisite tact and discretion. They would have forgotten they were rich, would have grasped how not to flaunt their wealth. They wouldn't have taken pride in it. They would have drunk it into themselves. Their pleasures would have been intense. They would have liked to wander, to dawdle, to choose, to savour. They would have liked to live. Their lives would have been an art of living.

But such things are far from easy. For this young couple, who were not rich but wanted to be, simply because they were not poor, there could be no situation more awkward. They had only what they deserved to have. They were thrown, when already they were dreaming of space, light, silence, back to the reality, which was not even miserable, but simply cramped (and that was perhaps even worse), of their tiny flat, of their everyday meals, of their puny holidays. That was what corresponded to their economic status, to their social situation. That was their reality and they had no other. But beside them, all around them, all along the streets where they could not but walk, existed the fallacious but nonetheless glowing offerings of antique-dealers, delicatessens and stationers. From Palais- Royal to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, from Champ-de-Mars to the Champs-Elysées, from the Luxembourg Gardens to Montparnasse, from Ile Saint-Louis to the Marais, from Place des Ternes to Place de l'Opéra, from Madeleine to the Monceau Gardens, the whole of Paris was a perpetual temptation. They burned with desire to give in to it, passionately, straight away and for ever. But the horizon of their desires was mercilessly blocked; their great impossible dreams belonged only to Utopia.

They lived in a quaint, low-ceilinged and tiny flat overlooking a garden. And as they remembered their garret - a gloomy, narrow, overheated corridor with clinging smells - they lived in their flat, to begin with, in a kind of intoxication, refreshed each morning by the sound of chirping birds. They would open the windows and, for many minutes, they would gaze, in utter happiness, at their courtyard. The building was old, not yet at all at the point of collapse, but dowdy and cracked. The corridors and staircases were narrow and dirty, dripping with damp, impregnated with greasy fumes. But in between two large trees and five tiny garden plots of irregular shapes, most of them overgrown but endowed with precious lawn, flowers in pots, bushes, even primitive statues, there wound a path made of rough, large paving stones which gave the whole thing a countryside air. It was one of those rare spots in Paris where it could happen, on some autumn days, after rain, that a smell would rise from the ground, an almost powerful smell of the forest, of earth, of rotting leaves.

They never tired of these charms and they always remained just as naturally responsive to them as they had been on the first day, but it became obvious, after a few care-free, jaunty months, that these attractions could in no way suffice to make them oblivious of the inadequacies of their dwelling. Accustomed to living in squalid rooms where all they did was to sleep, and to spending their days

in cafés, they took a long time to notice that the most banal functions of everyday life - sleeping, eating, reading, chatting, washing — each required a specific space, the manifest absence of which then began to make itself felt. They found consolation where they could, congratulated themselves on the excellent neighbourhood they were in, on the proximity of Rue Mouffetard and the Jardin des Plantes, on the quietness of the street, on the stylishness of their low ceilings, and on the magnificence of the trees and the courtyard through all the seasons; but indoors it all began to collapse under the heaps of objects, of furniture, books, plates, papers, empty bottles. A war of attrition began from which they would never emerge victorious.

With a total floor area of thirty-five square metres, which they never dared check, their flat consisted of a minute entrance hall, a cramped kitchen, half of which had been converted into a washroom, a modest-sized bedroom, an all-purpose room - library, living-room or study, spare bedroom - and an ill-defined nook, halfway between a broom-cupboard and a corridor, in which space had somehow been found for a matchbox fridge, an electric water- heater, an improvised wardrobe, a table, at which they ate, and a laundry-box which doubled up as a bench-seat.

On some days the lack of space became overwhelming. They would suffocate. But it was no use pushing back the boundaries of their two-roomed flatlet, no use knocking down walls, calling up corridors, cupboards, openings, no use imagining ideal wardrobes or taking over adjacent flats in their dreams, they would always end up back in what was their lot, their only lot: thirty-five square metres.

Judicious improvements would undoubtedly have been feasible: a partition wall could have been removed, freeing a huge and ill-used corner space, a too-bulky piece of furniture could be replaced advantageously, a set of cupboards could spring up. Doubtless, then, provided it was repainted, stripped, done up with a little love, their dwelling would have been unquestionably charming, with its one red-curtained window and its other window with green curtains, with its long, rather wobbly oak table that had been bought at the flea market filling the whole length of one wall section, beneath the very fine reproduction of a mariner's chart, and which a little roll-top Second Empire
escritoire
made of mahogany with inlaid brass beads, several missing, separated into two working desks - to the left, for Sylvie, to the right, for Jérôme - each signalled by an identical red blotter, an identical glass tile, an identical pencil-box; with its old pewter-rimmed glass jar that had been transformed into a lamp, with its metal-reinforced, wood-veneer seed-measuring jar which did as a waste- paper basket, with its two unmatched armchairs, its rush- seated chairs, its milking stool. And the neat, clean and ingenious whole would emanate friendliness and warmth, a wholesome aura of work and shared living.