The Mandarins

Scriassine looked at me severely. ‘Did you read my book The Red Paradise?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then you must have some idea of what would happen to us if we made Stalin a present of Europe.’

‘But there’s no question of giving Europe to Stalin,’ I said.

‘That’s precisely the question.’

‘Nonsense! The question is how to win the struggle against reaction. And if the left begins to split up, we won’t have a ghost of a chance.’

‘The left!’ Scriassine said ironically. ‘Let’s not talk politics,’ he added with an abrupt gesture of finality. ‘I hate talking politics with a woman.’

‘I didn’t start it,’ I said.

‘You’re absolutely right,’ he replied with unexpected gravity. ‘Please excuse me.’

We went back to the Ritz bar and Scriassine ordered two whiskies. I liked the taste; it was something different. And as for Scriassine, he, too, had the advantage of being new to me. The whole evening had been unexpected, and it seemed to emit an ancient fragrance of youth. Long ago there had been nights that were unlike others; you would meet unknown people who would say unexpected things. And, occasionally, something would happen. So many things had happened in the last five years – to the world, to France, to Paris, to others. But not to me. Would nothing ever happen to me again?

‘It’s odd being here,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘The heat, the whisky, the noise, and those uniforms …’

Scriassine glanced around him. ‘I hate this place. They requisitioned a room for me here because I’m a reporter for a Franco-American magazine,’ he explained. ‘Fortunately, it won’t be long before it becomes too expensive for me. And then I’ll be forced to get out,’ he added with a smile.

‘Can’t you leave without being forced?’

‘No. That’s why I find money such a corrupting influence.’ A burst of laughter brightened his face. ‘As soon as I get hold of some, I can’t wait to get rid of it.’

A bald-headed little man with mild and gentle eyes stopped at our table. ‘Aren’t you Victor Scriassine?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Scriassine answered. I caught a mistrustful look in his eyes – and at the same time a gleam of hope.

‘Don’t you recognize me? Manès Goldman. I’ve aged a lot since Vienna. I promised myself that if I ever met you again I would say thank you, thank you for your book.’

‘Manès Goldman! Of course!’ Scriassine said warmly. ‘Are you living in France now?’

‘Since ’35. I spent a year in the camp at Gurs, but I got out just in time …’ His voice was even more gentle than his eyes, so gentle in fact that it seemed almost dead. ‘I don’t want to disturb you any longer; I just want to say I’m very happy to have shaken the hand of the man who wrote Vienna in Brown.’

‘Nice seeing you again,’ Scriassine said.

The little Austrian walked quietly away and went out the glass door behind an American officer. Scriassine followed him with his eyes.

‘Another defeat!’ he said abruptly.

‘A defeat?’

‘I should have asked him to sit down, should have spoken to him. He wanted something and I don’t even know his address, didn’t think to give him mine,’ Scriassine said, his voice choked with anger.

‘If he wants to see you again, he’ll surely come here.’

‘He wouldn’t dare. It was up to me to make the first move, to make him sit down and question him. And the thing that really hurts is that it would have been so easy! A year at Gurs! And I suppose he spent the other four hiding. He’s my age, and he looks like an old man. He was hoping I could do something for him. And I just let him walk away!’

‘He didn’t seem disappointed. Maybe he did only want to thank you.’

‘That was just an excuse,’ Scriassine said, emptying his glass. ‘It would have been so simple to ask him to sit down. God! when you think of all the things you could do and yet somehow never do! All the opportunities you let slip by! The idea, the inspiration just doesn’t come fast enough. Instead of being open, you’re closed up tight. That’s the worst sin of all – the sin of omission.’ He spoke as if I weren’t present, in an agonizing monologue of remorse. ‘And during those four years, I was in America, warm, safe, well-fed.’

‘You couldn’t have stayed here,’ I said.

‘I could have gone into hiding too.’

‘I really don’t see what good that would have done.’

‘When my friends were exiled to Siberia, I was in Vienna; when others were being slaughtered by the Brown Shirts in Vienna, I was in New York. What’s so damned important about staying alive? That’s the question that needs answering.’

I found myself moved by Scriassine’s voice. We, too, felt ashamed whenever we thought of the deportees. No, we had nothing to blame ourselves for; it was just that we hadn’t suffered enough.

‘The misfortunes you don’t actually share … well, it’s as if you were to blame for them,’ I said. ‘And it’s a horrible thing to feel guilty.’

Suddenly Scriassine smiled at me with a look of secret connivance. ‘That depends,’ he said.

For a moment I studied his crafty, tormented face. ‘Do you mean there are certain feelings of remorse that shield us from others?’

Scriassine studied me in turn. ‘You’re not so dumb, you know. Generally, I dislike intelligent women, maybe because they’re not intelligent enough. They always want to prove to themselves, and to everyone else, how terribly clever they are. So all they do is talk and never understand anything. What struck me the first time I saw you was that way you have of keeping quiet.’

I laughed. ‘I didn’t have much choice.’

‘All of us were doing a lot of talking – Dubreuilh, Perron and myself. You just stood there calmly and listened.’

‘Listening is my job,’ I said.

‘Yes, I know, but you have a certain way with you.’ He nodded his head. ‘You must be an excellent psychiatrist. If I were ten years younger, I’d put myself in your hands.’

‘Are you tempted to have yourself analysed?’

‘It’s too late now. A fully developed man who’s used his defects and blemishes to piece himself together. You can ruin him but you can’t cure him.’

‘That depends on the sickness.’

‘There’s only one sickness that really amounts to anything – being yourself, just you.’ An almost unbearable sincerity suddenly softened his face, and I was deeply touched by the confiding sadness in his voice.

‘There are people a lot sicker than you,’ I said briskly.

‘In what way?’

‘There are some people who make you wonder when you look at them, how they can possibly live with themselves. Unless they’re complete idiots, they should horrify themselves. You don’t seem like that at all.’