Bel-Ami (Oxford World's Classics) Read online

  He bowed. ‘As you wish.’

  ‘Now let’s go up,’ she said.

  He followed her. She opened a door on the first floor, and Duroy saw, enveloped in blankets in an armchair beside a window, a kind of corpse that sat there gazing at him, ghastly pale in the red glow of the setting sun. He scarcely recognized him; he guessed, rather, that it was his friend.

  The room smelled of fever, infusions, ether, and tar-water, that indefinable, oppressive odour of a room where a consumptive breathes the air.

  Forestier raised his hand in a painful, slow gesture: ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘You’ve come to watch me die. Good of you.’

  Duroy forced a laugh. ‘Watch you die! That wouldn’t be an amusing sight, and I’d never pick that as a reason for coming to Cannes. I’ve come to see you, and to have a bit of a rest.’

  The other mumbled: ‘Sit down.’ And he bent his head, as if sunk in despairing thoughts. He was breathing in a rapid, shallow way, occasionally giving a kind of moan, as though to remind others of how ill he was.

  Seeing he was not going to talk, his wife came up and leaned on the window, saying, as she nodded at the horizon: ‘Look at that! Isn’t it beautiful?’

  In front of them, the hillside dotted with villas sloped down to the town which lay curved in a semi-circle along the shore, stretching, on the right, up to the jetty over which loomed the old city surmounted by its ancient belfry, and on the left as far as Pointe de la Croisette, opposite the Îles de Lérins.* These islands looked like two green stains on the pure blue water. From that height they seemed so flat that they might have been two huge, floating leaves.

  In the far distance, closing out the horizon on the other side of the bay, above the jetty and the belfry, a long range of bluish mountains traced across the brilliant sky an erratic, charming line of peaks, domed, crooked, and jagged in shape, which ended in a great pyramid-shaped mountain that plunged steeply down into the open sea.

  Mme Forestier pointed to it: ‘That’s the Esterel.’*

  The sky behind the dark summits was red, a blood-red tinged with gold that the eye could not bear to look at.

  In spite of himself, Duroy was stirred by the majesty of this close of day. Unable to think of any other phrase sufficiently vivid to express his admiration, he murmured: ‘Oh, yes, that’s stunning!’

  Forestier looked up at his wife and said: ‘Give me a little air.’

  She replied: ‘Be careful, it’s late, the sun’s setting, you’ll catch cold again and you know that’s not a good idea in your state of health.’

  With his right hand he sketched a febrile, ineffectual gesture that might have been an attempt to hit her, and he muttered with an angry grimace–a dying man’s grimace that revealed the fleshless lips, the sunken cheeks and the way every bone protruded: ‘I’m stifling, I tell you. What can it matter to you if I turn my toes up a day sooner or a day later, since I’m done for.’

  She flung the window wide open.

  The air that came in took them all by surprise, like a caress. It was a gentle, warm, quiet breeze, a springtime breeze already rich with the scents of the shrubs and intoxicating flowers that grow along that coast. In it you could distinguish the strong scent of resin and the bitter aroma of eucalyptus.

  Forestier drank it in in short, feverish gasps. Digging his nails into the arms of his chair, he said in a low, wheezy, waspish voice: ‘Close the window. It’s bad for me. I’d sooner die in a cellar.’

  And his wife slowly closed the window, then, her forehead against the glass, gazed out at the distance.

  Ill at ease, Duroy would have liked to talk to the sick man, to cheer him up. But he could not think of anything likely to comfort him. He stammered: ‘So you haven’t been any better since getting here?’

  The other shrugged his shoulders with weary impatience: ‘As you can see.’ He bent his head once more.

  Duroy went on: ‘My goodness, it’s awfully nice here compared with Paris. It’s still the middle of winter there. We’ve got snow, and hail, and rain, and it’s dark enough for the lamps to be lit at three in the afternoon.’

  Forestier enquired: ‘Nothing new at the paper?’

  ‘Nothing new. To replace you they’ve taken on that little Lacrin who used to be with Le Voltaire,* but he hasn’t enough experience. It’s time you came back!’

  The sick man muttered: ‘Me? Where I’ll soon be writing articles is six feet under the ground.’

  No matter what the subject, his fixation came back again like a bell tolling, constantly reappearing in every thought, in every sentence.

  There was a long silence, a painful, profound silence. The fiery sunset was slowly fading away; the mountains were turning black against the deepening red sky. Glowing shadows, a beginning of darkness which still held gleams of dying embers was coming into the room, tinting furniture, walls, draperies, and corners in shades of inky purple. The mirror over the mantelpiece, where the horizon was reflected, looked like a disc of blood.

  Mme Forestier remained motionless, standing with her back to the room and her face pressed against the window-pane.

  And Forestier began speaking in a staccato, breathless voice, heart-rending to listen to. ‘How many more of them shall I see–how many more sunsets? Eight… ten… fifteen or twenty… perhaps thirty… not more. You have time, you others do… but for me, it’s over. And it’ll go on after me, as if I were still here…’

  He said nothing for a few moments, then began again: ‘Everything I see reminds me that in a few days I shall no longer see it… It’s horrible… I shall see nothing more… nothing of what exists… the smallest objects that we use… glasses… plates… beds where people sleep so comfortably… carriages. It’s so lovely, going out in a carriage, in the evening… How much I enjoyed all that!’

  He was moving the fingers of both hands in a rapid, restless fashion, as if playing the piano on the arms of his chair. And each of his silences was more painful than what he said, so conscious were his companions that he must be thinking appalling thoughts.

  Suddenly, Duroy remembered what Norbert de Varenne had been saying to him just a few weeks earlier. ‘For my part, now, I see it so close to me that I often feel like stretching out my arms to push it away… I find it everywhere. Tiny creatures run over on the road, leaves that fall, a white hair I notice in a friend’s beard, these things fill my heart with despair, and cry out to me: “It’s here!”’

  He hadn’t understood, then; but now, as he watched Forestier, he did understand. And he began to feel an unknown, dreadful anguish, as though he could sense right there beside him, within his reach, in the armchair where that man sat gasping for breath, the hideous presence of death. He wanted to jump to his feet, to leave, to run away, to return to Paris that very instant! Oh, had he known, he would never have come!

  Night was spreading now throughout the room, like a mourning garment cast prematurely over this dying man. Only the window was still visible, with the motionless silhouette of the young woman outlined against its paler rectangle.

  And Forestier asked in an exasperated voice: ‘Well, aren’t we going to have the lamp brought in today? So this is how you look after an invalid!’

  The shadow of the body outlined against the window disappeared, and an electric bell echoed through the house.

  Soon a servant entered and placed a lamp on the mantelpiece. Mme Forestier said to her husband: ‘Do you want to go to bed, or will you come down for dinner?’ He murmured: ‘I’ll come down.’

  All three of them, as they waited for the meal, remained motionless for almost an hour, saying only an occasional word, an unnecessary, banal word spoken at random, as if there might have been danger, some mysterious danger, in letting that stillness last too long, in letting the silent atmosphere solidify in that room, that room where death was lurking.

  And then, finally, dinner was announced. It seemed long to Duroy, interminable. They did not speak, they ate noiselessly, then crumbled bread with the tip
s of their fingers. The servant, waiting on them, walked about, came and went without his feet making any sound, for, because the noise of his soles irritated Charles, the man wore slippers. Only the sharp tic-toe of a wooden clock, with its mechanical, regular motion, disturbed the quiet of the walls.

  As soon as they had finished eating, Duroy, on the pretext of fatigue, withdrew to his room; leaning on his window-sill, he watched as, high up in the sky, the full moon, like the huge globe of a lamp, cast its dry, dim light on the white walls of the villas, and spread a scaly coat of gently moving radiance over the sea. He tried to think up an excuse for leaving very soon, devising strategies, telegrams he would receive, a summons from M. Walter.

  But when he woke up the next morning, his plans of escape seemed to him more difficult to put into effect. Mme Forestier would not be taken in by his schemes, and he would lose, through his cowardice, all the advantages gained by his devotion. He said to himself: ‘Bah! It’s a nuisance; still, nothing to be done about it, life has its unpleasant moments, and then, perhaps it won’t be for long.’

  The sky was blue, that southern blue that fills your heart with joy; and Duroy walked down to the sea, thinking it would be soon enough if he saw Forestier later in the day.

  When he returned for lunch, the servant said to him: ‘The master has already asked for you two or three times, Monsieur. If you would be so good as to go up and see him?’

  He went upstairs. Forestier was sitting in an armchair, apparently asleep. His wife, stretched out on a sofa, was reading. The invalid raised his head. Duroy asked: ‘Well, how are you? You look in great form this morning.’

  The other replied: ‘Yes, I’m feeling better, my strength has come back. Have lunch quickly with Madeleine, because we’re going out for a drive in the carriage.’

  As soon as she was alone with Duroy, Madeleine said to him: ‘You see! Today he believes he’s cured. He’s been making plans all morning. Right after lunch we’re going to Golfe Juan to buy pottery for our flat in Paris. He’s absolutely determined to go out, but I’m horribly afraid something may happen. He won’t be able to stand the jolting on the drive.’

  When the landau arrived, Forestier went downstairs one step at a time, supported by his servant. But as soon as he saw the carriage, he asked for the hood to be opened.

  His wife objected: ‘You’ll catch cold. It’s madness.’

  He was determined: ‘No, I’m much better. I know I am.’

  At first they drove along those shady lanes which all have gardens on either side, and make of Cannes a sort of English park, then they turned into the road to Antibes and drove along the sea-shore.

  Forestier described the area. He had already pointed out the villa belonging to the Comte de Paris,* and he identified several others. He was cheerful, with the forced, artificial, feeble cheerfulness of a dying man. He would raise his finger, no longer having the strength to extend his arm. ‘Look, there’s the Île Sainte-Marguerite and the castle that Bazaine* escaped from. He certainly pulled a fast one there!’

  Then he began reminiscing about the regiment; he mentioned a number of officers, and that reminded him and Duroy of various incidents. But suddenly, at a turning of the road, they saw the whole of Golfe Juan, with its white village in the distance and the Cap d’Antibes at the other end.

  And Forestier, abruptly filled with childish delight, stammered: ‘Oh, the squadron, you’re going to see the squadron!’

  In the middle of the vast bay there were indeed a half-dozen large ships; they resembled rocks covered with branches. They were bizarre, deformed, enormous, with excrescences, and towers, and rams that plunged into the water as if intending to take root under the sea. You could not imagine how they could shift about and move, they seemed so heavy, so fixed to the sea-bed. A floating battery, round and tall and shaped like an observatory, resembled one of those beacons that are built on rocks.

  A tall, three-masted schooner passed near them with all its white, joyful sails spread, making for the open sea. It looked graceful and pretty beside those monsters of war, those monsters of iron, those hideous monsters crouching on the water. Forestier tried to identify them. He gave their names: Le Colbert, Le Suffren, L’Amiral-Duperré, Le Redoutable, La Dévastation,* then he corrected himself: ‘No, I’m wrong, that one’s La Dévastation.’

  They arrived before a large outbuilding with a sign announcing: ‘Golfe Juan Pottery Artworks’, and the carriage, having circled a lawn, stopped in front of the door.

  Forestier wanted to buy two vases to stand on his bookcase. As he could not really leave the carriage, various types were brought out to him, one after another. He spent a long time choosing, consulting his wife and Duroy. ‘You know, it’s for that piece of furniture at the far end of my study. When I’m sitting in my chair, I can see it all the time. I’ve set my heart on a classical shape, a Greek shape.’ He studied the samples, made them bring others, went back to the first ones. Finally, he made up his mind and, having paid, insisted that the vases should be dispatched immediately. ‘I’m returning to Paris in a few days,’ he said. They turned back; but, on the road along the bay, they were suddenly hit by a chill wind blowing down the fold of a small valley, and the sick man began to cough.

  At first it was nothing, a slight attack; but it grew, became a relentless paroxysm, then a kind of hiccup, a death-rattle.

  Forestier was choking, and each time he struggled to draw breath the cough, coming from deep down in his chest, tore at his throat. Nothing could calm him, nothing could relieve him. He had to be carried from the landau to his bedroom, and Duroy, who was holding his legs, felt his feet jerk at every spasm of his lungs.

  The warmth of his bed did not stop the attack, which lasted until midnight; then, at last, narcotics pacified the mortal spasms of the cough. The sick man remained sitting up in bed, his eyes wide open, until dawn. The first words he spoke were to ask for the barber, because he insisted on being shaved every morning. He got up for this part of his toilet, but he had to be put back to bed immediately, and he began to breathe in such a shallow, harsh, laborious manner that Mme Forestier, terrified, had Duroy–who had just gone to bed–woken up, with a request that he should fetch the doctor.

  Almost immediately, he brought back Dr Gavaut, who prescribed a draught and gave some advice; but when the journalist saw him to the door and asked for his opinion: ‘His last moments have come, he’ll be dead tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Warn that poor young woman and send for a priest. There’s nothing more for me to do. But I’m entirely at your service should you need me.’

  Duroy asked to see Mme Forestier. ‘He’s dying. The doctor advises sending for a priest. What do you want to do?’

  She hesitated for a long time, thinking everything over; then she replied slowly: ‘Yes, that would be best… for all sorts of reasons… I’ll go and prepare him, tell him that the curé wants to see him… Well, I don’t know, something or other. It would be so kind if you would go and find me a priest, and choose him carefully. Find one that won’t make a lot of fuss. Try to get one who’ll be satisfied with hearing confession and let us off the rest.’

  Duroy brought back an obliging old priest who agreed to this arrangement. As soon as he had entered the dying man’s bedroom, Mme Forestier came out and sat with Duroy in the adjoining room.

  ‘He’s horribly upset,’ she said. ‘When I mentioned a priest, a dreadful expression came over his face as if… as if he had felt… felt a breath… you know… He realized that it’s over, at last, that it’s a matter of hours…’ She was extremely pale. She continued: ‘I’ll never forget the look on his face. There’s no doubt that at that moment he saw death. He saw it…’

  They could hear the priest who, being slightly deaf, was speaking rather loudly. He was saying: ‘No, no, you’re not as bad as that. You’re ill, but in no danger. And the proof is that I’ve come as a friend, as a neighbour.’

  They could not make out Forestier’s reply. The old man went on: ‘No, I’m not
going to give you communion. We’ll talk about that when you’re well. But if you want to take advantage of my visit to make your confession, there’s nothing I’d like better. I’m a pastor, and I seize every opportunity to bring my lambs into the fold.’

  A long silence ensued. Forestier must have been speaking in his gasping, toneless voice.

  Then, all of a sudden, the priest declared in a different tone, the tone of a priest officiating at the altar:

  ‘God’s mercy is infinite, recite the Confiteor, my son. You may perhaps have forgotten it, I’ll help you. Repeat after me: “Confiteor Deo omnipotenti… Beatae Mariae semper virgini…”’

  He would stop from time to time, to allow the dying man to catch up. Then he said:

  ‘Now, make your confession…’

  The young woman and Duroy were sitting absolutely still as they waited uneasily, gripped by a strange emotion.

  The sick man had muttered something. The priest repeated: ‘You have been sinfully acquiescent: in what way, my son?’

  The young woman stood up and said simply: ‘Let’s go into the garden for a little while. We mustn’t listen to his secrets.’

  They went and sat on a bench, in front of the door, underneath a flowering rose and beside a circular bed of carnations which filled the air with its strong, sweet perfume.

  Duroy, after a few moments of silence, enquired: ‘Will it be long before you return to Paris?’

  She replied: ‘Oh, no. As soon as everything’s seen to, I’ll come back.’

  ‘In about ten days?’

  ‘Yes, at most.’

  He went on: ‘So there are no relatives?’

  ‘Not one, apart from cousins. His father and mother died when he was quite young.’

  They both watched a butterfly gathering its food from the carnations, going from one to another with a rapid fluttering of its wings, which continued beating slowly after it had settled on the flower. They were silent for a long time.

  The servant came to tell them that the priest had finished. They went back upstairs together.