The Mandarins

‘At the time! But I’ve killed them all my life!’ Vincent smiled maliciously. ‘Let me tell you something. They’re all nothing but shits – all of them, without any exception. And what we ought to do now is get rid of all those we missed.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Nadine asked.

‘I mean we ought to organize,’ Vincent replied, his eyes trying to catch Henri’s attention.

‘Organize what? Punitive expeditions?’ Henri said, laughing.

‘Do you know that in Marseilles they’re throwing everyone who belonged to the Maquis in jail, just as if they were a bunch of common criminals?’ Vincent said. ‘Are we going to let them get away with it?’

‘Terrorism is no solution,’ Lachaume said.

‘No,’ Henri said. He looked at Vincent. ‘I’ve heard talk about gangs who enjoyed playing at being judges. Now if it’s a question of settling a personal account, I can understand. But guys who think they’re saving France by killing a few collaborators here and there are either sick men or stupid bastards.’

‘Yes, I know. The sound thing is to join the Communist Party or the SRL!’ Vincent said. He shook his head. ‘You won’t get me.’

‘I guess we’ll just have to do without you!’ Henri replied amiably.

He got up; Nadine followed his example. ‘I’ll go with you,’ she said.

She seemed to enjoy trying to look like a woman; she had even made an attempt to use make-up. But her eyelashes looked like a sea urchin’s spiny bristles and there were black smudges under her eyes. As soon as they got outside she asked, ‘Are you having lunch with me?’

‘No, I have some work to do at the paper.’

‘At this time of day?’

‘At all times of the day.’

‘Well, let’s have dinner together then.’

‘No again. I plan to work very late. And afterwards, I’m going to see your father.’

‘Oh! That paper! Can’t you ever talk about anything else? After all, you know, it’s not the centre of the world!’

‘I never said it was.’

‘No, but that’s what you think.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, when will we see each other?’

He hesitated. ‘Honestly, Nadine, I haven’t a minute to spare these days.’

‘You do sit down at a table and eat occasionally, don’t you? I really don’t see why I can’t sit down opposite you.’ She looked Henri squarely in the face. ‘Unless I give you a pain in the neck.’

‘Of course you don’t.’

‘Well?’

‘All right. Meet me at the office tomorrow between nine and ten.’

‘I’ll be there.’

He was quite fond of Nadine and seeing her didn’t, as she put it, give him a pain in the neck. But that wasn’t the point. The thing was that he had to organize his life as efficiently as possible. And there was simply no place in it for Nadine.

‘Why were you so hard on Vincent?’ Nadine asked. ‘You really shouldn’t have been.’

‘I’m afraid he’ll do something foolish.’

‘Something foolish! Whenever anyone wants to do something, you call it foolishness. Don’t you think writing books is the most goddamned foolish thing of all? Everyone applauds you and for a while you’re all puffed up. But afterwards they all stick your book in a corner and no one gives it another thought.’

‘That’s my profession,’ he said.

‘It’s a funny profession!’

They continued walking in silence. When they arrived at the door to the newspaper Nadine said dryly, ‘I’m going home. See you tomorrow.’

‘So long.’

Hesitantly, she turned back and stood before him. ‘Between nine and ten – that’s rather late, isn’t it? We won’t have much time to do anything. Can’t we begin the evening a little earlier?’

‘I won’t be free before then.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘All right then, at nine-thirty. But what’s the use of being famous and everything if you don’t take any time out to live?’

‘To live!’ he thought as she turned on her heels and walked briskly away. ‘To them that always means only one thing; to spend your time with them. But there’s more than one way of living!’

He liked that familiar smell of stale dust and fresh ink that greeted him as he entered the building. The offices were still empty, the basement silent. But soon a whole world would rise from this stillness, a world which was his creation. ‘No one will ever lay his hands on L’Espoir,’ he repeated to himself. He sat down at his desk and stretched out his legs. There was, he told himself, no sense in getting upset. He would not give up the paper; somehow you always manage to find time for things you want to do; and after a good night’s sleep his work would move along much more smoothly.

He went through his mail quickly and looked at his watch. He had an appointment with Preston in half an hour, which left him ample time to have it out with Sezenac. ‘Ask Sezenac to come to my office,’ he said to his secretary. He went back to his desk and sat down. It’s all well and good to have confidence in people, but there were a lot of guys who would jump at the chance of taking Sezenac’s place and who deserved it more than he did. When you stubbornly decide to give one man a chance, you arbitrarily deny it to another one. And that was not right. ‘Too bad!’ Henri said to himself. He recalled how promising Sezenac had seemed when Chancel had first brought them together. For a year he had been the most zealous of the liaison agents; maybe he needed extraordinary circumstances to bring out his best. But now, pale, puffy, glassy-eyed, he constantly trailed in Vincent’s wake and he was no longer able to write a coherent sentence.

‘Ah! There you are! Sit down.’

Sézenac sat down without saying a word. Henri suddenly realized that he had been working with him a whole year and that he knew him not at all. He was more or less familiar with the lives of the others, their tastes, their ideas. But Sezenac kept things to himself.

‘When are you going to turn in something better than the junk you’ve been giving us lately?’ Henri said much more sharply than he had intended to.

Sézenac shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

‘What’s wrong?’ Henri asked. ‘Not getting laid enough? Got yourself in a jam?’

Sézenac sat quietly, rolling a handkerchief between his hands and staring stubbornly at the floor. It was really difficult to get through to him.

‘What’s wrong?’ Henri repeated. ‘I’m willing to give you another chance.’

‘No,’ Sézenac said. ‘Journalism just isn’t my dish.’

‘At first you were doing all right.’

Sézenac smiled vaguely. ‘Chancel helped me a little.’

‘He didn’t write your articles for you, did he?’