The Mandarins

‘No one ever looks at my feet,’ I said laughing.

She took the shoes and grumbled, ‘Thanks.’ I almost answered, ‘You’re welcome,’ as one would to a stranger. My attentions, my generosity made her feel uncomfortable, for she wasn’t really grateful and she reproached herself for not being so. I felt her wavering between gratitude and suspicion as she awkwardly crumpled the newspaper. And after all, she was right in distrusting me; my devotion, my generosity were the most unfair of my wiles: I was seeking to escape remorse at the expense of making her feel guilty. Remorse because Diego was dead, because Nadine didn’t have any pretty dresses, because sullenness made her ugly; remorse because I didn’t know how to make her obey me and because I didn’t love her enough. It would have been more honest of me not to smother her with kindness. Perhaps I might have been able to comfort her if I simply took her in my arms and said, ‘My poor little daughter, forgive me for not loving you more.’ If I had held her in my arms, perhaps it would have protected me against those little bodies which had gone unburied.

Nadine raised her head. ‘Have you spoken to Father again about that secretarial job?’

‘No, not since the day before yesterday,’ I answered, hastily adding: ‘The magazine doesn’t come out until April. There’s still plenty of time.’

‘But I want to know now,’ Nadine said, throwing a ball of paper into the fire. ‘I really don’t understand why he’s against it.’

‘He told you; he thinks you’d be wasting your time.’ A job, adult responsibilities – I personally thought it would be good for Nadine. But Robert had more ambitious plans for her.

‘And chemistry, don’t you think I’m wasting time with that?’ she said, shrugging her shoulders.

‘No one’s forcing you to study chemistry.’

Nadine had chosen chemistry for the sole purpose of upsetting us; she succeeded only in punishing herself.

‘It isn’t so much chemistry that bores the hell out of me,’ she said. ‘It’s just being a student. Father doesn’t seem to realize it, but I’m much older than you were when you were my age. I want to so something real.’

‘I agree with you,’ I replied. ‘You know that. But just be patient. If your father sees you’re not going to change your mind he’ll end up by saying yes.’

‘He may say yes, but you can bet he’ll say it grudgingly,’ Nadine replied sulkily.

‘We’ll convince him,’ I said. ‘Do you know what I’d do if I were you? I’d learn to type at once.’

‘I can’t start now,’ Nadine replied. She paused, gave me a rather defiant look, and added, ‘Henri is taking me to Portugal with him.’

I was taken by surprise. ‘Did you decide that yesterday?’ I asked in a voice which didn’t hide my disapproval.

‘My decision was made a long time ago,’ Nadine said. Aggressively she added, ‘Naturally, you disapprove, don’t you? You disapprove because of Paula. Isn’t that right?’

I rolled one of the moist paper balls between the palms of my hands. ‘I think you’re going to make yourself very unhappy.’

‘That’s my business.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose it is.’

I tried to force myself to hold my tongue. I knew my silence annoyed her, but she provokes me when, in that biting voice of hers, she spurns the very explanations she is anxious to hear. She wants me to force her hand, but I do not like to play her game. Nevertheless, I gave it a try. ‘Henri doesn’t love you,’ I said. ‘He’s in no mood just now to fall in love.’

‘But Lambert, Lambert would be a dumb enough idiot to marry me, is that it?’ she said angrily.

‘I’ve never tried to push you into marriage,’ I answered. ‘But the fact of the matter is that Lambert does love you.’

‘That’s not true,’ she said, interrupting me. ‘He doesn’t love me. Not only has he never asked me to sleep with him, but the other night at the party, when I practically came right out and asked him, he turned me down flat.’

‘That’s because he wants other things from you.’

‘If I don’t appeal to him, that’s his business. Besides, I can understand someone being difficult to please after having had a girl like Rosa. Believe me when I tell you I try to make allowances for that. Just don’t keep telling me he’s so completely gone on me,’ Nadine said, her voice rising.

‘Do whatever you like!’ I said. ‘You’re free to do as you please. What more can you ask for?’

She cleared her throat, as she always did when she was nervous. ‘As far as Henri and myself is concerned, it’s only a matter of a little adventure. As soon as we get back, we stop seeing each other.’

‘Honestly, Nadine, do you believe that?’

‘Yes, I do believe it,’ she said with too much conviction.

‘After you’ve spent a month with Henri you’ll want to hold on to him.’

‘You’re wrong.’ Again a look of defiance appeared in her eyes. ‘If you want to know, I slept with him last night and it did absolutely nothing to me.’

I turned my eyes away; I would rather not have known about it. ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ I said, trying not to reveal my embarrassment. ‘I’m sure that when you get back you won’t want to leave him – and he’ll have other ideas about it.’

‘That remains to be seen,’ she said.

‘Ah! So you admit it; you are hoping to hold him. But you’re only deceiving yourself, you know. All he wants at the moment is his freedom.’

‘There’s a game to be played. I enjoy it.’

‘Calculating, manoeuvring, watching, waiting – is that the kind of thing you enjoy? And you don’t even love him!’

‘I may not love him,’ she said, ‘but I want him.’ She threw a handful of paper balls into the fireplace. ‘With him at least I’ll live. Can’t you understand that?’

‘To live, you need no one but yourself,’ I said angrily.

She looked around the room. ‘Do you call this living? Frankly, my poor mother, do you believe you ever lived? What an existence! Talking to Father half the day and treating crackpots the other half.’ She stood up and brushed off her knees. ‘I do foolish things sometimes,’ she continued in an exasperated tone of voice, ‘I don’t deny it. But I’d rather end my days in a whorehouse than go through life wearing immaculate kid gloves like a good little bourgeoise. You never take off these gloves of yours, do you? You spend your time giving people advice, but what do you know about men? And I’m damned certain you never look at yourself in the mirror and never have nightmares.’

Attacking me was the tactic she always employed when she felt guilty or had doubts about herself. When she saw I didn’t intend to answer, she walked towards the door, stopped, hesitated a moment, and then turned around and asked in a calmer voice, ‘Will you come and have tea with us?’

‘Just call me whenever you’re ready.’

I stood up. I lit a cigarette. What could I do? I didn’t dare do anything. When Nadine first began seeking and fleeing Diego in bed after bed, I tried to do something about it. But she had discovered unhappiness too brutally; it had left her too bewildered with revolt and despair for anyone to exercise any control over her. When I tried to talk to her, she stopped her ears, she cried, she ran away. She didn’t return to the flat until the next morning. Robert, at my request, tried to reason with her. That evening, she didn’t go out to meet her American captain; she stayed at home alone in her room. But the next day she disappeared, leaving a note which said, ‘I am leaving.’ Robert searched for her all that night, all the next day, and all of another night, while I waited at home. The waiting was agonizing. At four o’clock in the morning a bartender in one of the Montparnasse cafés telephoned. I found Nadine, dead drunk and with a black eye, stretched out on a seat on one of the booths of the bar. ‘Let her have her freedom. It will only be worse if we try to restrain her,’ Robert said to me. I had no choice. If I had continued to fight her, Nadine would have begun to hate me and would purposely have defied me. But she knows I disapprove of her conduct and that I gave in against my will. She knows and she holds it against me. And maybe she’s not entirely wrong. Had I loved her more, our relationship might have been different. Perhaps I would have known how to stop her from leading a life of which I disapprove. For a long while I stood there looking at the flames, repeating to myself, ‘I don’t love her enough.’

I hadn’t wanted her; it was Robert who wanted to have a child right away. I’ve always held it against Nadine that she upset my life alone with Robert. I loved Robert too much and I wasn’t interested enough in myself to be moved by the discovery of his features or mine on the face of that little intruder. Without feeling any particular affection, I took notice of her blue eyes, her hair, her nose. I scolded her as little as possible, but she was well aware of my reticence; to her, I’ve always been suspect. No little girl has ever fought more tenaciously to triumph over her rival for her father’s heart. And she’s never resigned herself to belonging to the same species as I. When I told her she would soon begin menstruating and explained the meaning of it to her, she listened attentively, but with a fierce trapped look in her eyes. Then she violently threw her favourite vase to the floor, shattering it to bits. After her first period, her anger was so powerful that she didn’t bleed again for another eighteen months.

Diego had created a new climate between us; at last she owned a treasure which belonged to her alone. She felt herself my equal, and a friendship was born between us. But afterwards, everything grew even worse. Just now, everything is worse.

‘Mother.’

Nadine was calling me. As I walked down the corridor, I thought to myself, ‘If I stay too long, she’ll say I monopolise her friends; but if I leave too soon, she’ll think I’m insulting them.’ I opened the door. In the room were Lambert, Sézenac, Vincent, and Lachaume. There were no women; Nadine had no girl friends. They were sitting around the electric heater, drinking ersatz coffee. Nadine handed me a cup of black, bitter water.

‘Chancel was killed,’ she said abruptly.

I hadn’t known Chancel very well, but ten days earlier I had seen him laughing with the others around the Christmas tree. Maybe Robert was right; the distance between the living and the dead really isn’t very great. And yet, like myself, those future corpses who were drinking their coffee in silence appeared ashamed to be so alive. Sézenac’s eyes were even more blank than usual; he looked like a Rimbaud without brains.

‘How did it happen?’ I asked.

‘Nobody knows,’ Sézenac replied. ‘His brother got a note saying he died on the field of honour.’