Authors: Albert Cohen
Left to himself, young Deume gave his schoolboy snigger. Chief's completely round the bend. The parallel corpses, the flagons and the apples, that was the champagne talking. What a mishmash! And what was that about She-Who-Puts-out-Eyes? And why Polonius?
'And that business of grabbing me by the beard because he loved me so much! It's a hoot! Tight as a lord! Never mind, he said he loved me, and do you realize what that means? On the personal-contacts front, it's the tops!'
He frowned. The Himalayas which were her motherland? Hang on, yes, this woman was the wife of the Indian delegate! Yes, that's it, of course, she's from Nepal, which is slap-bang in the middle of the Himalayas! Anyway, the name he'd called her by sounded distinctly Indian. Oh yes, the wife of the leader of the delegation! And come to think of it she had heaps of charms to her person, beautiful eyes, long eyelashes, that was her right enough, she was beautiful and she was from Nepal! Well now, was the Indian delegate in for a cuckolding or was he not! Because if it was charm you wanted, the chief had oodles of it, there was no getting away from that! Hard cheese, Indian delegate! But the important thing was that the above-named, Deume Adrien, was now in extraordinarily thick with the USG, thick as thieves, for God's sake! Telling him about his love-life amounted to a cast-iron guarantee of imminent promotion! You alone can understand me! Well, that was a compliment and a half. So, when he got back from his tour, he'd ask him out to dinner in some ultra-smart restaurant, just the two of them, just two pals, no need to have Ariane along, make it a stag affair. We're off! Swedish hors-d'oeuvre, smoked salmon, Belon oysters, hot woodcock pate, or else foie gras in pastry, or maybe duck galantine, or perhaps a lobster souffle, he'd see, but there'd definitely be crêpes Suzette to finish with, plus assorted tales of love-life! And as much dry imperial pink champagne as the chief could drink! Waiter, another magnum! And remember to order the coffee well before the dessert, really good coffee took twenty minutes to make. And when the brandy, Napoleon, the best, was setting the finishing touches to the work begun by the dry imperial, hilarious drollery all round: then would be the time to fly a kite, when he too could slot his Christian name in. Surely he could tell a chap he was on first-name terms with what he really thought about VV's incompetence? His criticisms would be courteous in form but devastating in content. Anyway, VV would be retiring shortly. Say! How about if he slipped in a reference to VV's latest bloomer as soon as the USG had finished going on about his Himalayan beauty? No, too soon.
Chi va piano va sano.
Wait till he got back from his tour. For now, just prepare the ground by attracting maximum goodwill. So when he got back a few moments from now and started going on about the love of his life, listen, act understanding, be the sympathetic friend, encourage him to waffle on, it was child's play, right? But don't smile all the time, he'd gone overboard with the smile in the run-up to the thick-as-thieves turning-point, you blunted the effect if you smiled all the time. Every three or four minutes, just a smallish smile to show he was paying attention, that he was sympathetic, while remaining his own man, an equal. Hello! Quarter to ten! He'd be back soon in his dressing-gown. The dressing-gown was another very good sign: it made the contact decidedly personal.
'Well I never! The Under-Secretary-General about to do the dirty on the leader of the Indian delegation!' he chortled to himself, and from the back of his throat he unleashed one of his silly schoolboy sniggers.
Shortly after this the phone rang, and Solal, arriving at a rate of knots, answered it and said yes, the lady could come up. He replaced the receiver and then he laughed, and he danced, sparkling with joy, he danced with one hand held on his hip and his dressing-gown yawned revealing his nakedness.
l
Ay mi paloma,
1
he crooned, and then he stopped. Turning, he came up close to the husband, took him by the arm, and kissed him on the shoulder, still sparkling with joy.
"Tis my Himalayan girl,' he said.
CHAPTER 35
'Where's my husband?' she asked the moment she stepped through the door, while he was still greeting her, hand to lips, hand to forehead.
'He's just this instant left for the Palais. I'll explain. Please don't you try to explain anything: I know everything. Oh yes I know: hated the thought of seeing me, came in the end even so, because you didn't want to hurt his feelings, and if you didn't tell him about my unspeakable behaviour your only motive was to avoid a scandal which would damage his career. "You see, sweetie, it all went swimmingly with the chief, he says 'old man', calls me Adrien." That's what he'll say when you're alone together. So make your mind easy. What are you thinking?'
'I'm thinking how odious you are.'
'You're right,' he said with a pleasant smile. 'And now I shall explain. When they told me you were here, your husband offered to leave so I could be alone with my Himalayan beauty. I asked him to stay, but he was determined to be discreet, told me he had some urgent piece of work to finish. I insisted he should stay. However, he said he was very sorry but he was not going to obey my orders. What more could I have done? Nguyen showed him out and you missed seeing him. Since we're alone together, I shall now proceed to seduce you.'
'You're vile.'
'Utterly,' he said with a smile. 'But three hours from now you will be doe-eyed, just as I promised. Oh yes. Seduced. And by the despicable means which all women like and you deserve, you Putter-out-of-Old-Men's-Eyes. The day I came to you as an old man I was ready to whisk you away on the horse I had waiting outside, but tonight I find you unattractive. In fact, now I've got a chance to see that lumpish nose of yours in a good light, I am appalled.'
'Beast!' she said.
'Look, I'll have a little bet with you. If in three hours from now you aren't madly in love with me, I shall appoint your husband head of section. Scout's honour. I swear it on the head of my uncle. Do you accept? If you would prefer to leave now, you are at perfect liberty to do so,' he added after a pause, and he gestured towards the door. 'This way out for noses. I hope yours will get through without too much of a squeeze.'
'Bully,' she snarled, her jaw muscles taut.
'Well? Are you going or do you accept the bet?'
'I accept the bet;' she said, looking him directly in the eye.
'Sure of herself,' he said with a smile. 'But there's one condition. From now until one in the morning, you will not speak a word. Agreed?'
'Yes.'
'Word of honour?'
'No need. When I say yes, I mean yes.'
'Ditto when you say no. So, come one in the morning you will be doe-eyed. Come twenty to two you and I off to station, off our heads, off to sun and sea. What are you thinking? This was coming, you know, it had to be. Come on, say what you're thinking. Make it quick, while you've still got time. For at one in the morning you will look at me with ecstasy in your eyes. Come along, out with it.'
'Filthy Jew!' she said, and she gave him a quick, mean look, like a bad-tempered little girl.
'I thank you in the name of your Jesus, who was circumcised when he was one week old. Not that all that matters. We scorn your scorn. Blessed art Thou, Eternal, our God, Who chose us from all peoples and exalted us among all nations. So say we on the eve of our Passover. Shocked by the dressing-gown? Usually they don't mind my dressing-gowns. Women are much more tolerant than men because they're less conventional, especially the young ones. The other good thing about them is that once they start getting passionate they turn into Jew-lovers. You'll see. I shall only be a moment. Meanwhile, do powder your nose. It shines.'
When he returned, hair untidy, tall and slim in a white silk dinner-jacket, he stood in front of the mirror, knotted the tie which as a Commander of the Order he was entitled to wear, gave himself an approving once-over, then turned to her to see what effect he was producing. As she did not react in any way, he made as if to check a half-smothered yawn and then placed a sheet of paper, folded in two, on a coffee-table.
'Your husband's promotion. You can give it to him if things don't work out as planned. Head of the Disarmament Section. He'll be quite useless in the job, though no more useless than anybody else. My compliments, your nose has stopped shining. I think this dinner-jacket looks well on me, don't you agree? Yes, suits me very well, thank you.'
He picked up a rose, breathed its scent deeply, and then tossed it behind him. Holding a string of sandalwood beads, he strode round the room, then paused in front of the mirror and tapped his chest. The right place was at the angle formed by the base of the sternum and the gap between the third and fourth ribs. But come the moment, quite possible not find right spot with gun-barrel, probably be nervous as he made a start on the preliminaries. So mark the correct site beforehand, have a little blue spot tattooed there. Suddenly the phone. He picked it up.
'Good evening, Adrien. No, you're not disturbing me. Yes, and I shall also need to have your comments. Take your time. No, I told you, you're not disturbing me in the least. I haven't started on the seduction. By the way, don't forget to put Don Juan's primordial contempt in your novel. As I told you, his contempt derives from his certain knowledge that in three days or even three hours, if he so wishes, the proud and proper lady sitting so primly in her armchair will start cooing in that special, moronic fashion and will adopt assorted positions in bed which are hardly compatible with her current dignity. Just a matter of using the right tactics. So he doesn't have a great deal of respect for her to begin with and he finds it
ludicrous that she should try to appear so respectable as she sits in her armchair, ridiculous that she should be offended by his dressing-gown, ludicrous and ridiculous because he knows that if he can go to the bother he'll soon have her wriggling like a fish in the usual way, a panting, animal servant of the night, naked and bucking under him, poor Don Juan, now sweetly moaning, now lustily thrusting, and invariably with the whites of her eyes showing, like a saint in ecstasy. Oh, were there a woman who would not succumb to seduction, one who would be mine for fine and noble reasons, I would trail my head in the dust all my days! Hence the primordial contempt, which, however, is maintained only at the cost of ever-open, ever-bleeding regret.
'I feel a strange compulsion to confide in you, my dear Adrien. Oh, to what pretences, to what shams am I driven by other people! For I must live, but not as a blear-eyed, down-at-heel teller of truths! For when you tell the truth, people turn very nasty and they'd have me kicked out if I ever said openly that our work is a farce and our illustrious League a house of clowns. But I need money. Not because I have a cash-box for a heart but because I am absurdly sensitive to the point where I faint in an unheated room and cold water numbs my fingers, even in summer. Besides, I have no wish to put my head on their block. They are without mercy for those who have no money. I know, I've experienced it. But above all Under-Clown-General I remain so that I do not become a poor man, with a poor man's soul. Poverty degrades. A poor man grows ugly and takes the bus, washes less, smells of sweat, watches the pennies, loses his natural nobility; and can no longer feel good, honest contempt for anything. You can despise, genuinely despise, only what you possess, what you control. Goethe despised more genuinely than Rousseau.
'Didn't catch that. Further thoughts on Don Juan? Well, for example, he never really listens to the people he talks to, because he is too busy assessing what they are like by watching them, which is much more revealing. But he remains eternally separated from others, even from those he loves. He sees them but he has no sense that they are real and distinct from himself. They are figments of his imagination, figures in a dream. He is eternally alone, he does not belong with them, he merely pretends that he does. What else? The constant awareness of his mortality, his mania for order, which reassures him, the attraction of his own death at three in the morning. The attraction of failure, too. Last year, in London, there was a young duchess or something along those lines. He'd just been introduced and she was drawn to him at once. They took themselves off to a side-room, away from the others, to chat, or rather to make a start on business which is invariably concluded in a bed. He felt an irresistible urge to touch the bone at the basis of the duchess's spinal column, a bone which is called the coccyx. This he did as she was about to sit down. He told her that he had wished to feel what was left of the tail of the duchess's distant ancestors. She did not approve of his interest.
'More again? In spite of the ill he speaks of them, he is at his ease only with women. With men, he has to stay on his guard and appear clubbable. But women do not criticize him, they accept him as he is, find that his dressing-gowns are unexceptional and his strings of beads perfectly natural. Like mothers. In summer, when he spends a few days with Isolde, she evinces no surprise whatsoever at his habit of strolling through the grounds wearing a tussore dressing-gown because of the heat, a pith helmet as a protection against the sun, riding boots to ward off the mosquitoes, he is afraid of mosquitoes, swatting loathsome horseflies with a horsetail fly-whisk. She is indulgent and finds it perfectly natural that he should kit himself out like some African chieftain. But of all the women he knows, the one he likes best is little Edmee, a Salvation Army midget with twisted legs, who is his friend.
'Oh yes, Adrien, seducing them is easy. So easy in fact that when I was young I managed to bag one of my very own. It's a complicated story involving twin brothers - I was both - one clean-shaven and the other sporting a false moustache. I'll tell it to her tomorrow as we look out over the purple Cephalonian sea.
'And you must also explain Don Juan's mania for seduction. For in reality he is chaste and not particularly interested in bed-sports, finding them monotonous, primitive and, to be frank, comical. But he cannot avoid joining in if he wants women to love him. That's how they are. They insist on it. And he needs to be loved. Firstly, it stops him thinking about death, helps him forget that there is no afterlife, no God, no hope, no meaning, only the silence of a senseless universe. That is, through the love of a woman, he clouds his thoughts and cloaks his despair. Secondly, it is a bringer of comfort. When women worship him, they console him for the absence of oneness with his fellows. Such is his greatness: its attendant lady-in-waiting is yclept Solitude. Thirdly, they also console him for not being a king, for he was made to be king, born a king, effordessly a king. He cannot be a king, and he will not stoop to be a political leader. For to be chosen by the masses he would first have to be like them, ordinary and unexceptional. So he elects to rule over women, women are his kingdom, and he will choose only those who are noble and pure, for where is the pleasure in subduing the unclean? Besides, the noble and the pure make far better bed-servants. Horrible man, she's thinking, which is a good sign.