"Suite Française" - читать интересную книгу автора (Némirovsky Irène)3The writer Gabriel Corte was working on his terrace, between the dark, swaying woods and the golden green setting sun fading over the Seine. How peaceful everything was around him! Beside him were his well-trained faithful friends, great white dogs who were awake yet motionless, their noses pressed against the cool paving stones, their eyes half closed. At his feet his mistress silently picked up the sheets of paper he dropped. His servants, the secretary, were all invisible behind the shimmering windows; they were hidden somewhere in the background of the house, in the wings of his life, a life he desired to be as brilliant, luxurious and disciplined as a ballet. He was fifty years old and had his favourite games. Depending on the day, he was either Lord of the Heavens or a miserable writer crushed by hard work and labouring in vain. On his desk he had had engraved, "To lift such a heavy weight, Sisyphus, you will need all your courage." His fellow writers were jealous of him because he was rich. He himself bitterly told the story of his first candidature to the Académie Française: one of the electors implored to vote for him had sarcastically replied, "He has three telephone lines!" He was handsome, with the cruel, languid movements of a cat, expressive soft hands and a slightly full Roman face. Only Florence, his official mistress, was allowed to remain in his bed until morning (the others never spent the night with him). Only she knew how many masks he could put on, this old flirt with dark circles under his eyes and thin arched eyebrows, too thin, like a woman's. That evening he was working as he normally did, half-naked. His house in Saint-Cloud had been specially built to be hidden away from prying eyes, right down to the vast, wonderful terrace, planted with blue cinerarias. Blue was Gabriel Corte's favourite colour. He could only write if he had a small glass bowl of deep lapis lazuli beside him. He would look at it now and again, and caress it like a mistress. What he liked best in Florence, as he often told her, were her clear blue eyes, which gave him the same feeling of coolness as his glass bowl. "Your eyes quench my thirst," he would murmur. She had a soft, slightly flabby chin, a contralto voice that was still beautiful and, Gabriel Corte confided to his friends, something cow-like in her expression. I like that. A woman should look like a heifer: sweet, trusting and generous, with a body as white as cream. You know, like those old actresses whose skin has been softened by massage, makeup and powder. He stretched his delicate fingers in the air and clicked them like castanets. Florence handed him a lemon, then an orange and some glacé strawberries; he consumed an enormous amount of fruit. She gazed at him, almost kneeling before him on a suede pouffe, in that attitude of adoration that pleased him so much (though he couldn't have imagined any other). He was tired, but it was that good tiredness which comes from doing enjoyable work. Sometimes he said it was better than the tiredness that comes after making love. He looked benevolently at his mistress. "Well, that's not gone too badly, I think. And you know, the midpoint." (He drew a triangle in the air indicating its top.) "I've got past it." She knew what he meant. Inspiration flagged in the middle of a novel. At those moments, Corte struggled like a horse trying in vain to pull a carriage out of the mud. She brought her hands together in a gracious gesture of admiration and surprise. "Already! I congratulate you, my dear. Now it will go smoothly, I'm sure." "God willing!" he murmured. "But Lucienne worries me." "Lucienne?" He looked at her scornfully, his eyes hard and cold. When he was in a good mood, Florence would say, "You still have that killer look in your eye…" and he would laugh, flattered. But he hated being teased when in the throes of creativity. She couldn't even remember who Lucienne was. "Of course," she lied. "I don't know what I was thinking!" "I don't know either," he said in a wounded voice. But she seemed so sad and humble that he took pity on her and softened. "I keep telling you, you don't pay enough attention to the minor characters. A novel should be like a street full of strangers, where no more than two or three people are known to us in depth. Look at writers like Proust. They knew how to use minor characters to humiliate, to belittle their protagonists. In a novel, there is nothing more valuable than teaching the lesson of humility to the heroes. Remember, in "Planes," Florence replied, looking up at the sky. "Won't they leave me the hell alone?" he thundered. He hated the war; it threatened much more than his lifestyle or peace of mind. It continually destroyed the world of the imagination, the only world where he felt happy. It was like a shrill, brutal trumpet shattering the fragile crystal walls he'd taken such pains to build in order to shut out the rest of the world. "God!" he sighed. "How upsetting, what a nightmare!" Brought back down to earth, he asked to see the newspapers. She gave them to him without a word. They came in from the terrace and he leafed through the papers, a dark look on his face. "All in all," he said, "nothing new." He didn't want to see anything new. He dismissed reality with the bored, startled gesture of a sleeping man awakened abruptly in the middle of a dream. He even shaded his eyes with his hand as if to block out a dazzling light. Florence walked towards the radio. He stopped her. "No, no, leave it alone." "But Gabriel…" He went white with anger. "Listen to me! I don't want to hear anything. Tomorrow, tomorrow will be soon enough. If I hear any bad news now (and it can only be bad with these c**** in government) my momentum will be lost, my inspiration blocked. Look, you'd better call Mademoiselle Sudre. I think I'll dictate a few pages!" She hurried to summon the secretary. As she was coming back to the drawing room, the telephone rang. "It's Monsieur Jules Blanc phoning from the Presidential Office, wishing to speak to Monsieur Corte," said the valet. She carefully closed all the doors so that no noise could filter through to where Gabriel and his secretary were working. Meanwhile, the valet went to prepare a cold supper for his master, as he always did. Gabriel ate little during the day but was often hungry at night. There was some leftover cold partridge, a few peaches, some delicious little cheeses (which Florence herself had ordered from a shop on the Left Bank) and a bottle of Pommery. After many years of reflection and research, Corte had come to the conclusion that, given his poor digestion, only champagne would do. Florence listened to Jules Blanc's voice on the telephone, an exhausted, almost imperceptible voice, and at the same time heard all the familiar sounds of the house-the soft clinking of china and glass, Gabriel's deep, languid voice-and she felt as though she were living a confusing dream. She put down the phone and called the valet. He had been in their service for a long time and trained for what he called "the workings of the house," an inadvertent pastiche of seventeenth-century parlance that Gabriel found quite charming. "What can we do, Marcel? Jules Blanc himself is telling us to leave…" "Leave? To go where, Madame?" "Anywhere. To Brittany. The Midi. It seems the Germans have crossed the Seine. What can we do?" she repeated. "I have no idea, Madame," said Marcel frostily. They'd waited long enough to ask his opinion. They should have left last night, he thought. Isn't it just pathetic to see rich, famous people who have no more common sense than animals! And even animals can sense danger… As for him, well, he wasn't afraid of the Germans. He'd seen them in '14. He'd be left alone; he was too old to be called up. But he was outraged: the house, the furniture, the silver-they hadn't thought about anything in time. He let out a barely audible sigh. "Madame should warn Monsieur," he concluded. Florence started walking towards the drawing room, but she had barely opened the door when she heard Gabriel's voice. It was the voice he assumed on his worst days, when he was most agitated: slow, hoarse, interrupted now and again by a nervous cough. She gave orders to Marcel and the maid, then thought about their most valuable possessions, the ones to be taken when there's danger, when you have to escape. She placed a light but sturdy suitcase on her bed. First she hid the jewellery she'd had the foresight to get out of the safe. Over it she put some underwear, her washing things, two spare blouses, a little evening dress, so she'd have something to wear once they'd arrived-she knew there'd be delays on the road-a dressing gown and slippers, her make-up case (which took up a lot of space) and of course Gabriel's manuscripts. She tried in vain to close the suitcase. She moved the jewellery box, tried again. No, something definitely had to go. But what? Everything was essential. She pressed her knee against the case, pushed down, tried to lock it and failed. She was getting annoyed. Finally, she called her maid. "Do you think you can manage to close it, Julie?" "It's too full, Madame. It's impossible." For a second Florence hesitated between her make-up case and the manuscripts, chose the make-up and closed the suitcase. The manuscripts could be stuffed into the hatbox, she thought. I know him, though! His outbursts, his crises, his heart medicine. We'll see tomorrow, it's better to get everything ready tonight and not tell him anything. Then we'll see… |
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