The Conspiracy (6 page)

— That's just inverted romanticism, and pretty low quality too, Rosenthal replied. Victory in thought must precede victory in reality.

— If only it could, said Laforgue. That's exactly why you strike me as idealist. Doesn't it really come down to the fact that reality strikes us as rather hard to shift?

— I don't agree, Rosenthal interrupted. The function of philosophy consists exclusively in the
profanation
of ideas. No violence is equal in its effects to theoretical violence. Later comes action . . .

— It comes, said Laforgue, when theory has penetrated the masses. Do you think it's our theory which the masses are just waiting to be penetrated by?

— We shall see, replied Rosenthal.

Yet Bernard was more impatient than all the rest. But nothing then seemed to him more urgent than to utter a few cries which he usually called messages – and which lacked simplicity. In December and again in February, Rosenthal published pages in
Civil War
that had no serious chance of shaking capitalism.

V

His first cries uttered, his first cries written, Bernard wanted action.

Civil War
had been going for three months, it had five hundred subscribers and eight hundred single-copy purchasers, three publishing houses were giving it advertising. This was a great deal, it was a success, but it could not be called a historic upheaval in French thought. Rosenthal would no doubt have been content with talking about anger or the depreciation of values, or the ruses of bourgeois Reason, if such arguments had provoked legal actions – but with this absurd freedom of the press, the Public Prosecutor was still making no move. It was impossible to view the exercise of philosophy as an act.

Spring was about to arrive. People had been through hard months, but the ice was melting, winter was dying in showers of rain, one felt like rising early, the days were lengthening like the plants you see tremulously growing and unfolding on the cinema screen. In Rue de la Paix, the shop-girls came out in droves and crossed Place Vendôme and Rue de Rivoli arm in arm. From time to time the weather would be fine, as though summer, autumn or late-spring days that had not made their appearance months earlier – stifled by rain or a storm – were now dispensing their warmth upon still-numbed hands and still-chapped lips. There were still hoarfrosts on the lawns of the Luxembourg, but between two spring showers the sky would come back into view.

Apart from this oncoming spring, it was a bad time for impatient young men. Things seemed generally to be calming down, in economics and politics alike. There was a moment when the history of Europe appeared as slack as a neap-time sea, when people forgot war and peace, the Ruhr, Morocco and China. The season at Deauville had never been as brilliant as that year – indeed people would still be speaking of it during the summer of '37, not such a bad summer itself in terms of race-meetings and casinos. At Rosenthal's parents' house, ladies who had had their
belle époque
during the period of
Mobilization-is-not-war
would say:

— Don't you think, my dear, this spring has a little whiff, as it were, of pre-war days?

There really was not much happening. People were on the whole amused by the
Gazette du Franc
affair, Prime Minister Poincaré had hundred-vote majorities, the Briand–Kellogg Pact was perhaps going to make people feel a bit safer. There were a few strikes, of course, but Halluin and the textile industry of the Nord were far away, and the taxi strike was really quite pleasant for the private cars, which could at last drive about in Paris. People might perhaps have been moved by the thirty deaths in the Rhine Army during the month of March: how dreadful those epidemics are, mowing down young soldiers in faraway countries during the showery season – not so far away as Indochina or Madagascar, but all the same a long way from their mothers! Thereupon Marshal Foch had died, in the same month as the Rhine Army soldiers, to whom people had given rather less thought. What an opportunity to go and queue up at the end of Rue de Grenelle – in the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, with Englishmen, nannies from the Champ-de-Mars, old ladies and priests – to see what the funerals of illustrious families are like, and how old victorious marshals settle into death wearing their chinstraps! But in April, when soldiers fraternized in the Gard with the striking miners they were actually supposed to evict from the pits, people were fed up with all these stories about servicemen whereas only marshals – at most – were really tolerable. Eventually, however, the ladies felt easier in their minds. They were the same ones who, a few years later, would talk about pre-crash days as in '28 they had talked of pre-war days, and who could be heard in drawing-rooms saying that in the last war their sons had been taken, which for France's sake they could accept, but that in the next war their money would be taken too. Their minds had to be set at rest. Luckily, that year
Prefect Chiappe
showed that with him public order was in no danger: after 1 May and 1 August, people told themselves it would be a long while before the communists had bandaged all their wounds.

It was indeed a difficult year to get through, for young men who placed all their hopes in the aggravation of disorder, and for whom the only desirable future consisted in not having one. Already their parents, forever paved with good intentions, were reviving career plans for them about which they had long been doubtful, bearing in mind what this strange, tottering world of the twenties held in store. Laforgue's father, who had quite some time ago consoled himself for his son's refusal to enter the Ecole Polytechnique, spoke to him about doing a doctoral thesis, after his
agrégation
:

— Who do you take me for? Philippe exclaimed.

Was it all going to start up again, then? Were they finally going to be compelled, after invoking all the shipwrecks befitting great ornamental centuries, to sail upon the level waters of bourgeois life, observing nautical regulations and all the red signals on bridges?

The prosperity of '29, those Markets that were so healthy despite their ups and downs and any check in the contango rate, appeared as oppressive to them as the celebrated failed Revolution of '19, ten years earlier, had seemed to their elders.

They had lived amid such thrilling uncertainty, since the time when, at school, their classes had been interrupted by air raids and shellbursts and every door that banged had made them think of an explosion, that it seemed impossible to them that the sad age of indolence miraculously suspended by the four years of the War could ever resume its course.

Laforgue and Rosenthal dated history from nineteen hundred and fourteen: they would have liked to be able to call '29 Year XV, numbering the dates of a new era in the same way that the Russians spoke of Year XIII of the October Revolution. Were they now going to have to remain in the continuation of the Christian era, and feel themselves bound in perpetuity to Jesus, Charlemagne, Henri IV, Louis XIV, Voltaire, Napoleon and M. Thiers? For several months they foresaw the advent of an age of regress and boredom, such as had not been seen since the Restoration or the first years of the Third Republic, when they would lament the warlike and peaceful exploits of their elders, just as the young men of eighteen hundred and twenty had lamented the Revolutionary Wars, the Italian Campaign and Napoleon's anabases from one end of Europe to the other, or the young men of eighteen hundred and eighty had lamented the Burning of Paris and the Commune with its sixty days of great innovations. Would they then be reduced to writing poems?

They were well aware that the public authorities and their families were conspiring, as in the past, to make them relapse into brilliant futures, careers, worries about advancement, money and successful marriages. These pretensions struck them as repugnant, but they trembled to see them confirmed by the becalming of history: in their entire adolescence, there was perhaps no year more disturbing than that year of '29, when everything contributed to a non-stop purr of contentment.

Thank God, in November, the Wall Street crash was to reassure them: they welcomed it like news of a victory. Since they tended to confuse capitalism with important people, when they saw their fathers' faces they convinced themselves that they had been quite right to stake their lives on the cards of confusion, and that they could indubitably count upon a world destined for great metamorphoses. There was no question of settling down into an order that was about to die, no question of making their beds.

— Didn't we say so! they exclaimed.

But they had had a narrow escape.

None of them was more sensitive than Rosenthal to these plunges and abrupt recoveries of potential. You must picture Bernard founding
Civil War
only in order to play for time, in order to occupy his mind, until he got a chance to show what he was capable of. He would gladly have been heroic: there were no opportunities.

One evening towards the end of March, in Rue d'Ulm, Rosenthal exclaimed that the Revolution required far more than articles:

— One writes, he said, and one believes that the Revolution is made. One falls – we fall – into post-revolutionary fantasies. Are you satisfied? Yes or no? You're not saying anything? One's confidence in revolution can be measured only by the sacrifices one makes to it and the risks one runs for it . . .

— That's more or less what I've always had the honour of telling you, replied Laforgue.

Next day, Bloyé said to Laforgue:

— It's four months that the journal has been going now, that's a long time . . . Rosenthal must have some ideas at the back of his mind. You can detect that hypocritical self-satisfaction of men who are making plans . . .

— Yes, said Laforgue. He's slyly singing a new song to himself.

Rosenthal dropped hints, he said:

— Do you recall Dostoievsky and what he says about the Idea one must have and in whose power one must believe? There's no living person to whom I feel closer than I do to Arkady Makarovich
Dolgoruky
. . .

His friends waited, however. Knowing his taste for mystery and coups de théâtre, they did not question him.

VI

One Saturday, towards evening, they all received an express letter inviting them to assemble next day at two o'clock opposite Saint-Germain-des-Prés: all of them – Laforgue, Bloyé, Jurien and lastly Pluvinage.

No group of young people exists in which hierarchies and distances are not established, as though some of them were credited by all the others with a more far-reaching future. Rosenthal, who was looked on as the leader and enjoyed this position, vaguely mistrusted Pluvinage and had hesitated before inviting him along: he would not have entrusted him with his secrets. Perhaps it was because of his name: nobody calls themself Pluvinage. But the day was not expected to be packed with great mysteries, so Bernard had notified Pluvinage after all.

It was a rainy early-April day, an icy aftermath of those March showers when all hopes placed in the establishment of spring burst as rapidly as the heavens. Because of that black Sunday rain, Paris was empty: umbrellas drifted between wind and water like shining jellyfish; couples made their way to tedious visits and slapped their children; gusts of damp wind closed down the newspaper vendors under the Abbey porch, where three beggars lay in ambush for the faithful at Vespers. Rosenthal was waiting in an old open car, parked between the Clamart tramway and the shop supplying insignia on Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

— You're a proper swine, said Bloyé, you really could have brought your old hearse up to Rue d'Ulm.

— Climb aboard, said Rosenthal. We've quite a way to go.

— Might one know where we're off to? asked Laforgue.

— You'll soon see, replied Rosenthal as he engaged the gears.

None of them insisted: they had not yet lost their taste for mystery games.

The car left Paris by Avenue de Neuilly and Route de la Défense; at Argenteuil, which they approached via the river embankment, batteries of factory chimneys rose behind the curtain of rain over flat meadows ruffled by the wind; acid fumes hung everywhere in the harsh Sunday air; after leaving behind Argenteuil and then Bezons, they crossed the Seine a second time by the Maisons-Laffitte bridge, then turned in the direction of Saint-Germain. A little before Mesnil-le-Roi, the car stopped with a screech of brakes in front of an old house built in that rather soft facing-stone which one soon encounters along the roads of the
Vexin
region. The rain had just stopped. Its branches still black, barely budding after the interminable winter, the wisteria over the gate was dripping. Rosenthal rang at the iron door; a young woman emerged onto the perron and shouted to them to come in, and they pushed open the garden gate.

— Hullo, Rosenthal, how are you? asked the young woman. Weren't you scared off by all that rain?

— Of course not, replied Bernard. It was even rather pleasant. Simone, these are the friends I've told you about.

— I'm sure François will be delighted to meet them, she said.

She clasped their hands at length, staring them rather myopically in the eye. She was fair, made-up, quite thin, her hand had bones of disturbing smallness and dryness. They went in; puddles formed at once beneath their raincoats. In the dining-room, there were crocheted covers, lampshades, plates bearing legends on the walls, a faded green cloth embroidered with yellow flowers on a round table where piles of journals and newspapers lay about. The young woman caught their glances:

— It's pretty squalid, isn't it? she said. But François needed a quiet place to work; in Paris, he can't do anything with all his appointments and that dreadful telephone. I'm going to make you some tea, you must be frozen . . .

She went out, they heard the clatter of cups. They gathered round the wood fire that was burning at the back of the black marble fireplace.

— Who ever is that lady? asked Laforgue, and who was she talking about?

— You're in the home of a friend of mine, Rosenthal replied. He'll be down.

The young woman returned. They waited a while longer, drinking tea with slices of lemon from glasses.

— Do you at least like Russian tea? she asked.

The conversation flagged. They could hear somebody pacing up and down overhead.

— When François is working, the young woman said, he's like a lion in a cage . . . I told him you were here.

They grew a little bored, but after all, for a Sunday in April . . . Through the panes they could see the valley of the Seine, which changed direction beneath the terraces of Saint-Germain, and on the blurred horizon a province of red roofs dropped at random, from the plain with its roads right up to the slopes of Mont Valérien.

— You've got a really splendid view, said Bloyé.

— As if I cared about that! she cried, crossing her bare legs. Nothing gets on my nerves worse than the countryside. And at this time of year!

A door closed on the first floor, footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs, which creaked, and their host entered. He was a tall man with something of a stoop, blue eyes which darted about with such mobility that at times he appeared to have a squint, and a bald forehead which gave him a faintly distraught air.

‘I've seen that face somewhere,' thought Laforgue. ‘That weak mouth . . .'

— Régnier, said Rosenthal, allow me to introduce my friends. Meet Laforgue, Bloyé, Jurien, Pluvinage . . .

Régnier shook hands with them. They all knew his name, they had read his books, he was the first well-known writer they had met. They immediately wanted to make an impression, compel him to admire them. It was not easy, and ultimately they did not succeed. François Régnier talked almost the whole time, in a jerky manner, about the weather they were having; about the book on which he was working, and which as it so happened was concerned with youth, and he was so very glad to be having a chat with them; about travelling – he mentioned Spanish and Greek dishes, one would have thought travellers never emerged from restaurants.

— At La Barraca in Madrid, he said, one can eat a truly exceptional
cocido .
. . When you go to Madrid, you absolutely must go and see my old friend El Segobiano, who will make you an astounding bread soup . . .

Or else:

— In Athens, at Costi's, the thing to eat is roast woodpigeon. But perhaps the best meal I ever had in Greece was really those eggs fried in olive oil that I ate at Eleusis, in the home of a grocer who was explaining some things to me about the Battle of Salamis.

They did not really find him very exceptional, indeed this superior tone of the man of forty who has seen it all made them quite cross. Every now and then, Régnier would stand up and walk round them.

— François, stop that, said the young women finally. You're making us seasick . . .

— Simone, he replied, give me my plaid. It's perishing in this house.

He threw a Scottish plaid over his shoulders and did not sit down. He asked the young men questions about themselves, about their ideas on love and politics. They replied evasively – what business was it of his? He quoted things famous people had said, he seemed to know all Paris:

—
Herriot
was saying to me only last week, he began, ‘My dear Régnier . . .'

Or:

—
Philippe Berthelot
was telling me that the day the Briand–Kellogg Pact was signed . . .

The name of Plato launched him into a brilliant variation on the theme of painting, about which as a matter of fact Berthelot had never understood a thing: however, these specialists fresh from their
Sophist
and
Politicus
judged it fallacious. Bloyé explained this to him with a certain insolent severity. They were not sorry to catch out in error such odious fluency, and to show Régnier that, even if he knew Berthelot, Herriot and Léon Blum, he was at any rate ignorant of Plato.

— It's quite possible, he replied, laughing in a careless manner, baring his teeth. What a time it has been since I construed the
Republic
at the Sorbonne, before the war! That isn't the least bit important, in any case. When you're my age, you won't give a fig for textual fidelity.

He went on explaining painting to them, which in those years played the role that the theatre had filled twenty years earlier, and since he was mentioning the names of painters they did not know, they found him vulgar.

A little later, he asked them:

— How old are you all?

— Twenty-two.

— Twenty-three.

— Twenty-three.

— Rosenthal I know, said Régnier.

— And you? asked Laforgue.

— Thirty-eight, he said. How young they are!

Régnier began to laugh once again with his disagreeable laugh.

At around half past five, they left. It was quite dark; beneath a ceiling of clouds, a vast jumble of winking lights stretched to the ends of the earth, far beyond Paris. As soon as Rosenthal accelerated, under the rotting trees in the forest of Saint-Germain, the cold cut into their cheeks. The wind smelled of moss, fungus and mould.

— What do you think of him? asked Rosenthal. How did you find Régnier?

— Not bad, said Bloyé weakly.

— Extraordinarily boring, said Laforgue.

— He wasn't on form, said Rosenthal. One shouldn't catch him on a working day, I'm afraid we may have disturbed him a bit, then he says any old thing, just banalities. But I wanted you to make his acquaintance, for later. Now it's done, you'll have other opportunities to know him better . . .

— Don't apologize, said Laforgue. The weather might have been even filthier.

Rosenthal was upset and fell silent. But near Bougival he suddenly said, in a defiant tone of voice:

— Régnier's the most intelligent man I know, all the same.

— Why not? said Laforgue. Perhaps he's keeping his cards close to his chest . . .