Bel-Ami (Oxford World's Classics) Page 19

  He had often wondered how he ought to behave if he met her face to face. Should he greet her, or should he pretend not to see her? ‘I’ll pretend not to see her,’ he thought.

  It was cold, the gutters were thick with ice. The pavements looked dry and grey in the light of the gas lamps.

  When the young man got home, he reflected: ‘I’ll have to move. This won’t do for me now.’ He felt nervous and elated, capable of leaping from roof to roof, and he kept saying out loud, as he moved between his bed and the window: ‘I’m going to be rich! Rich! I must write to Papa.’

  He wrote to his father from time to time, and the letter always brought great joy to the little Normandy inn standing by the highway, at the summit of the big hill overlooking Rouen and the broad valley of the Seine.

  And from time to time, he himself received a blue envelope addressed in a large tremulous hand, and invariably, at the beginning of his father’s letter, he would read these lines: ‘My dear son: This letter is to let you know that your mother and I are well. There’s not much in the way of news here. However, I must tell you…’ And in his heart he still felt an interest in the affairs of the village, in news about neighbours, in the state of the soil and of the harvests.

  He kept saying to himself, as he tied his white tie in front of his tiny mirror: ‘I must write to Papa tomorrow. If he could see me this evening, in the house where I’m going, wouldn’t the old boy be flabbergasted! Lord! I’ll soon be having a dinner the like of which he’s never had!’ And, suddenly, he saw again that dark kitchen, behind the empty café, the saucepans casting yellow glints onto the walls, the cat sitting in the hearth with his nose to the fire, in the pose of a crouching Chimera, the wooden table thick with years of accumulated grease and spilt liquids, a soup bowl steaming in the centre, and a lighted candle standing between two plates. And he saw them as well, the man and woman, the father and mother, the two peasants with their slow gestures, drinking their soup in little sips. He was familiar with the tiniest creases in their old faces, with the smallest movements of their arms and their heads. He even knew what they said to one another, every evening, as they ate their supper sitting opposite each other.

  Again he thought: ‘Still, I really must go and see them one day.’ But he had finished dressing, so he blew out the light and went down.

  Prostitutes accosted him as he walked along the outer boulevard.

  Pulling his arm away, he snapped at them: ‘For God’s sake leave me alone!’ in tones of fierce contempt, as if they had insulted him, mistaken him for someone else… Who did they think he was? Couldn’t those tarts tell the difference between men? The feeling of his black coat, donned for a dinner in the home of very rich, very well-known, very important people, gave him the sense of having a new personality, the consciousness of being a different person, a man of the world, of real high society.

  He walked confidently into the hallway, which was lit by the great bronze candelabra, and with an easy gesture handed his walking-stick and overcoat to the two valets who had approached him. All the drawing-rooms were illuminated.

  Mme Walter was receiving in the second, which was the largest. She welcomed him with a charming smile, and he shook hands with the two men who had arrived before him, M. Firmin and M. Laroche-Mathieu,* both deputies and unacknowledged editors of La Vie française. M. Laroche-Mathieu had a particular authority in the paper because of his great influence in the Chamber. No one doubted that he would become a minister some day.

  Then the Forestiers arrived, Mme Forestier, in pink, looking enchanting. Duroy was amazed to see her on intimate terms with the two national representatives. She spent more than five minutes standing by the fireplace with M. Laroche-Mathieu, talking very quietly. Charles seemed exhausted. He had lost a great deal of weight over the past month, he coughed incessantly, and kept saying: ‘I really ought to make up my mind to go south for the rest of the winter.’

  Norbert de Varenne and Jacques Rival arrived together. Then, a door having opened at the far end of the room, M. Walter entered with two tall young girls of sixteen and eighteen, one ugly, the other pretty. Although Duroy was aware that the Director had a family, he was filled with astonishment. He had never thought of the daughters of the Director except in the way you think about distant lands you will never see. And then, also, he had imagined them still to be tiny children, and here before him were two women. He experienced the slight moral disquiet occasioned by a scene-change not hidden from view.

  When they had been introduced, they shook his hand in turn, and then went and sat at a little table which was obviously for them, where they began sorting through a pile of reels of silk thread in a small basket.

  Another person had yet to arrive, and the company fell silent, feeling the kind of constraint that precedes dinners where the guests are all in different moods, after spending the day doing different things.

  Duroy had raised his eyes idly to the wall, and M. Walter, prompted by an obvious wish to show off his possessions, addressed him from a distance: ‘You’ re looking at my pictures?’ The ‘my’ rang out. ‘I’ll show them to you.’ And he picked up a lamp so that they could make out all the details.

  ‘These are the landscapes,’* he said.

  In the middle of the panel hung a large canvas by Guillemet, showing a Normandy beach under a stormy sky. Beneath it a wood by Harpignies was displayed, then a plain in Algeria by Guillaumet, with a camel on the horizon, a big camel with long legs, resembling some strange monument.

  M. Walter moved on to the neighbouring wall and declared in a solemn tone, like a master of ceremonies: ‘Major paintings.’* There were four canvases: A Visit to the Poorhouse, by Gervex; A Woman Reaping, by Bastien-Lepage; A Widow, by Bouguereau, and An Execution by Jean-Paul Laurens. This last work depicted a priest of the Vendée* being executed against the wall of his church by a detachment of the French Republican Army.

  A smile flitted across the owner’s grave face as he indicated the next panel: ‘Here we have the lighter works.’* First there was a small canvas by Jean Béraud, entitled Upper and Lower. It showed a pretty Parisian woman climbing up the stairs of a moving tram. As her head appeared at the level of the upper deck, the men seated on the benches were gazing, with avid delight, at the young face approaching them, while the men standing on the lower platform were studying the young woman’s legs with a different expression–one of disappointment and lust.

  Holding the lamp out as far as he could, M. Walter kept saying, with a lecherous laugh, ‘Well? Isn’t that great? Quite something, isn’t it?’

  Next he announced: A Rescue, by Lambert. There, in the middle of a dining-table that had been cleared away, a young cat sat on its haunches, examining with perplexed astonishment a fly drowning in a glass of water. He had one paw raised, ready to snatch the insect with a quick swipe. But he hadn’t made up his mind. He was hesitating. What was he going to do? Then M. Walter, pointing to a Detaille: The Lesson, which portrayed a soldier in a barracks teaching a poodle to play the drum, declared: ‘Now that’s witty!’ Duroy was laughing approvingly and enthusing: ‘It’s charming, absolutely charming, charm…’ when he stopped dead, hearing behind him the voice of Mme de Marelle, who had just entered the room.

  M. Walter continued to hold the lamp up to the canvases, as he explained them. Now he was showing a watercolour of Maurice Leloir’s The Obstacle. It depicted a sedan chair which had been obliged to halt, because the street was blocked by a brawl between two working men, a hefty pair who were battling like Titans. You could see, emerging from the sedan chair’s window, the exquisite face of a woman who was intently watching, with neither impatience nor fear, but with a certain admiration, this struggle between two brutes.

  M. Walter was still talking: ‘I’ve others in the next rooms, but they’re by people who aren’t so well known, and aren’t prizewinners yet. This is my Salon Carré.* At present I’m buying up young artists, very young, and putting them in reserve in our family rooms, against the day w
hen they become famous.’ Then he added, in a whisper: ‘Now’s the time to buy pictures. Painters are starving. They haven’t a penny, not a penny…’ But Duroy was seeing nothing, was listening without understanding. Mme de Marelle was there, behind him. What should he do? If he greeted her might she not turn her back on him or lash out at him with some insolent remark? If he ignored her, what would people think?

  He told himself: ‘I’ll play for time.’ He was so agitated that for an instant he thought of pretending that he had suddenly been taken ill, so that he could leave.

  The tour of the walls was over. M. Walter replaced the lamp and went to greet the latest arrival, while Duroy began to study the canvases again, on his own, as if he had not yet wearied of admiring them. His mind was in a whirl. What should he do? He could hear people’s voices, he could make out what was being said. Mme Forestier called to him: ‘By the way, M. Duroy…’ He hurried over to her. It was to tell him about a friend of hers who was giving a reception and would really love a reference to it in the gossip column of La Vie française. He stammered: ‘But of course, Madame, of course…’

  Mme de Marelle was now very close to him. He did not dare turn round and move away. All of a sudden he thought he must have lost his mind; she had said, in a loud voice: ‘Hallo, Bel-Ami, don’t you recognize me any more?’ He quickly spun round on his heels. She was standing in front of him, smiling, her eyes full of laughter and affection. She offered him her hand. He shook it nervously, still fearing some trick, some treachery. She calmly went on: ‘What have you been doing with yourself? You’re quite a stranger.’

  He was stammering, unable to regain his composure. ‘I’ve been very busy, Madame, very busy. M. Walter has put me in charge of a different section, which keeps me very fully occupied.’

  She replied, still looking him in the face, without his being able to detect anything other than benevolence in her eyes: ‘So I heard. But that’s not a reason for forgetting your friends.’

  They were separated by the entrance of a portly lady, a portly lady in a low-cut gown, with red arms and red cheeks, who was pretentiously dressed and coiffured and walked with so heavy a tread that, watching her move, you could feel the weight and solidity of her thighs.

  As everyone seemed to be treating her with great respect, Duroy asked Mme Forestier: ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The Vicomtesse de Percemur,* the one who signs herself “Patte Blanche”.’

  He was dumbfounded, and wanted to laugh. ‘Patte Blanche! Patte Blanche! And there was I, imagining a young woman like yourself! She’s Patte Blanche? Oh, that’s rich, really rich!’

  A servant appeared at the door and announced: ‘Dinner is served.’

  The dinner was banal and lively, one of those dinners where people talk about everything without saying anything. Duroy found himself between the editor’s elder daughter, Rose, the ugly one, and Mme de Marelle. Being quite so close to the latter unsettled him somewhat, although she seemed very much at ease and chatted in her usual witty manner. At first he floundered about, unrelaxed and hesitant, like a musician who has lost the key. Little by little, however, his confidence returned, and their eyes, meeting continually, questioned one another, their gazes mingling intimately, almost sensually, as they used to do.

  Suddenly he thought he felt, under the table, something brush his foot. He gently advanced his leg and encountered that of his neighbour, who did not shrink away from this contact. They were not conversing at this particular juncture, both having turned away to speak to their other neighbour. His heart pounding, Duroy thrust his knee a little closer. A slight pressure answered him. Then he realized that their love-affair was beginning once again.

  What did they say after this? Nothing very much; but their lips trembled each time they looked at one another.

  The young man, however, anxious to be nice to his boss’s daughter, addressed a remark to her from time to time. She replied just as her mother would have done, never hesitating over what she ought to say.

  On M. Walter’s right, the Vicomtesse de Percemur had adopted a regal pose; and Duroy, enjoying watching her, asked Mme de Marelle softly:

  ‘Do you know the other one, the one who signs herself “Domino Rose”?’

  ‘Yes, certainly, the Baronne de Livar?’

  ‘Is she the same type?’

  ‘No, but just as funny. A tall dried-up creature of sixty, with false curls, horsy teeth, ideas dating from the Restoration and dressed to match.’

  ‘Where did they dig up these literary freaks?’

  ‘Bourgeois social climbers have always tended to collect the left-overs of the nobility.’

  ‘No other reason?’

  ‘No, no other reason.’

  Then a political discussion began between the host, the two deputies, Norbert de Varenne and Jacques Rival; it lasted until the dessert.

  When they returned to the drawing-room, Duroy went up to Mme de Marelle again, and, looking deep into her eyes: ‘Would you like me to see you home this evening?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because whenever I dine here, M. Laroche-Mathieu, who’s my neighbour, drops me at my door.’

  ‘When shall I see you?’

  ‘Come and lunch with me tomorrow’ They separated without saying another word.

  Duroy found the evening dull, and did not stay late. Going down the stairs, he caught up with Norbert de Varenne, who had also just left. The old poet took his arm. No longer fearing competition in the paper–for their contributions were fundamentally different–he now treated the young man with a grandfatherly benevolence.

  ‘Well, will you keep me company part of the way?’

  ‘With the greatest pleasure, my dear sir.’

  And they set off walking slowly down the Boulevard Malesherbes. The night was cold, and Paris almost deserted. It was one of those nights that seem vaster than others, when the stars seem higher up in the sky and the air seems to carry on its icy breath something that comes from further away than the heavenly bodies.

  At first the two men did not speak at all. Then Duroy, to break the silence, remarked: ‘That M. Laroche-Mathieu strikes me as very intelligent and well-informed.’

  The old poet murmured: ‘You think so, do you?’

  Surprised, Duroy hesitated: ‘Yes, I do; besides, he is said to be one of the most capable men in the Chamber.’

  ‘Possibly. In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king. All those men, you see, are second-rate, because their minds are confined within two boundaries: money and politics. They’re boors, my dear boy, with whom it’s impossible to talk about anything, anything we care about. Their intelligence has a foundation of sludge, or more precisely of sewage, like the Seine at Asnières.*

  ‘Ah! It’s hard to find a man whose thoughts have depth and breadth, who gives you the feeling of being on the coast breathing in those great sea-breezes. I’ve known a few such men; they’re dead.’

  Norbert de Varenne spoke in a voice that was clear but restrained, that would have rung out into the silence of the night had he let it do so. He seemed keyed-up and melancholy, with that kind of melancholy which sometimes falls upon the soul and makes it as resonant as ground that is frozen hard.

  He went on: ‘What does it matter, anyway, if there’s a little more or a little less genius, since everything must come to an end!’ He fell silent. Duroy, who on that particular evening was feeling light-hearted, said with a smile: ‘You’re in a black mood, tonight, my dear sir.’

  The poet replied: ‘I always am, my boy, and you will be too, just like me, in a few years’ time. Life is a hill. While you’re climbing up, you look towards the summit, and you’re happy; but when you reach the summit, suddenly you can see the slope down, and the bottom, which is death. It’s slow going up, but coming down is quick. At your age, you’re happy. You hope for so many things, which moreover never happen. At my age, you don’t hope for anything any more… except death.’

  Duro
y began to laugh: ‘My God, you’re giving me the shivers.’

  Norbert de Varenne continued: ‘No, you don’t understand me now, but later you’ll remember what I’m telling you at this moment. The day will come, you’ll see, and for many it comes before you know it, when the laughter’s over, as they say, because behind everything you look at, what you see is death. Oh! “Death.” I know you don’t even understand the word! At your age it has no meaning. At mine, it’s terrifying.

  ‘Yes, suddenly you understand it, you don’t know why nor in response to what, and then everything in life looks different. In my case, for the past fifteen years I’ve felt it wearing me down like some creature gnawing away at my being. Little by little, month by month, hour by hour, I’ve felt it undermine me like a house that’s falling in. It’s disfigured me so completely that I don’t recognize myself. There’s nothing left of me, of the me that was a joyful, vigorous young man of thirty. I’ve seen it dye my black hair white, and with such cruel, cunning slowness! It’s taken from me my firm skin, my muscles, my teeth, the whole of my former body, leaving me only my despairing soul which will soon be taken from me too.

  ‘Yes, the wretch has worn me down, has quietly and horribly, second by second, completed the long destruction of my being. Now I feel myself dying in everything that I do. Every step brings me nearer to it, every movement, every breath hastens its odious task. Breathing, sleeping, eating, drinking, working, dreaming, everything we do is part of dying. Indeed, to live is to die!

  ‘Ah! You’ll find out! If you thought about it for just a few moments, you’d understand. What are you hoping for? Love? A few more kisses, and you’ll be impotent. And then, what else? Money? To do what with? To buy women? What kind of happiness is that? To overeat, grow obese, and suffer the torments of gout all night long? And what else is there? Fame? What’s the point of that when you can no longer reap its rewards in the shape of love? And after that? Death is always there, at the end.