The Mandarins

It would have been too difficult to explain my feeling. There was a look of hate in his eyes and I was ashamed to have let myself be taken in by the mirage of carnal pleasure. A man, I discovered, isn’t a Turkish bath.

‘You don’t want to!’ he was saying. ‘You don’t want to! Stubborn mule!’ He struck me lightly on the chin; I was too weary to escape into anger. I began to tremble. A beating fist, thousands of fists … ‘Violence is everywhere,’ I thought. I trembled and tears began running down my cheeks.

Now, he was kissing my eyes, murmuring, ‘I’m drinking your tears,’ and a conquering tenderness appeared in his face, a childlike tenderness, and I had pity as much for him as for myself. Both of us were equally lost, equally disillusioned. I smoothed his hair; I asked, ‘Why do you hate me?’

‘It has to be,’ he said regretfully. ‘It just has to be.’

‘But I don’t hate you, you know. In fact I like being in your arms.’

‘Do you really mean that?’

‘Yes, I do.’

In a sense I did mean it; something was happening. True, it had missed the mark, was sad, ridiculous even, but it was real.

‘It’s been a strange night,’ I said with a smile. ‘I’ve never spent a night like this before.’

‘Never? Not even with younger men? You’re not lying to me, are you?’

The words had lied for me. I endorsed their lie. ‘Never.’

He crushed me ardently against him. ‘All right?’

I knew my pleasure found no echo in his heart, and if I impatiently awaited his it was only to be done with it. And yet I had been subdued, was willing to sigh, to moan. But not very convincingly, I imagine.

He, too, had been subdued, for he didn’t insist. Almost immediately, he fell asleep against me; I also dozed off. The weight of his arm across my chest awakened me.

‘You’re here! Thank God!’ he exclaimed, opening his eyes. ‘I was having a nightmare; I always have nightmares.’ He seemed to be speaking from very far off, from the darkest depths of night. ‘Don’t you have a place where you can hide me?’

‘Hide you?’

‘Yes. It would be so wonderful to just disappear. Can’t we disappear for a few days?’

‘I have no place. And I can’t get away myself.’

‘What a shame!’ he said, and then asked, ‘Don’t you ever have nightmares?’

‘Not very often.’

‘I envy you! I always have someone near me at night.’

‘I have to leave soon, you know,’ I said.

‘Not right away. Don’t go. Don’t leave me!’ He grabbed me by the shoulders. I was a life preserver. But in what shipwreck?

‘I’ll wait till you fall asleep,’ I said. ‘Would you like to meet me again tomorrow?’

‘Yes, certainly. I’ll be at the café next door to your place at noon. Is that all right with you?’

‘Fine. Now try to sleep quietly.’

As soon as his breathing grew heavy, I slipped out of bed. It was hard for me to tear myself from the night which clung so tenaciously to my skin. But I didn’t want to arouse Nadine’s suspicions. Each of us had her own way of duping the other: she told me everything; I told her nothing. As I stood before the mirror, transforming my face into a mask of decency, I realized Nadine had been one of the main reasons for my decision to say yes to Scriassine, and I couldn’t help myself from holding it against her. Yet I really hadn’t the least regret for what I had done. You learn so many things about a man when you’re in bed with him, much more than when you have him maunder for weeks on a couch. Only I was far too vulnerable for this sort of experiment.

I was kept very busy all morning. Sézenac didn’t come, but I had quite a few other patients. I had only a vague impression of Scriassine, and I needed to see him again. Our night together was resting heavily on my heart, incomplete, absurd. I hoped that in talking to him we would be able to bring it to a conclusion, to save it perhaps. I was the first to arrive at the café, a small place, painted bright red, with highly polished tables. I had often bought cigarettes there, but I had never sat down. Couples were sitting in booths and talking quietly. A waiter appeared and I ordered a glass of ersatz port. I felt as if I were in a strange city; I no longer seemed to know what I was waiting for. Suddenly Scriassine burst into the café and walked hurriedly over to my table.

‘Sorry I’m late. I had a dozen appointments this morning.’

‘That makes it all the nicer of you to have come.’

He smiled at me. ‘Sleep well?’

‘Very well.’

He, too, ordered a glass of ersatz port and then leaned towards me. There was no longer any trace of hostility in his face. ‘I’d like to ask you a question.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Why did you agree so readily to go up to my room with me?’

I smiled. ‘I suppose it’s because I like you a little,’ I replied.

‘You weren’t drunk?’

‘Not at all.’

‘And you weren’t sorry afterwards?’

‘No.’

He hesitated. I gathered he was anxious to obtain a detailed commentary for his most intimate catalogue. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to know. You said you’d never spent a night like that before. Is that true?’

‘Yes and no,’ I answered with a slightly embarrassed laugh.

‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, disappointed. ‘It’s never really true.’

‘It’s true at the moment; less so the next day.’

He swallowed the sticky wine in a single gulp.

‘You know what chilled me?’ I said. ‘There were moments when you looked so terribly hostile.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘That couldn’t be helped.’

‘Why? The struggle between the sexes?’

‘We’re not on the same side. I mean, politically.’

For a moment I was stupefied. ‘But politics has so little place in my life!’