The picture was, in spite of everything, entertaining and, as I said, well played. It is by the quantity of elements that are mixed in it that a movie attains, with difficulty, the dignity of a work of art; but that is also why we endure, in the movies, a number of productions of a mediocrity whose equivalent we would not accept in literature.
Next I saw (and dare I confess that it was in a third movie-house, where they showed only newsreels?) an official funeral, processions, parades, horse and auto races and, for the third time, for, the public seeming to like it, the two other houses presented also the same ineptitude: a race to see who would get there last.… I left filled to the brim. After a long time of work in the country, that debauch found a semblance of excuse in my eyes. In the eyes of others, it’s no matter. But still I’m not particularly pleased, since I have to present to the public one day of my life, that that day should do me so little honor.
“It depended only on you to fill it better.”
Yes, that’s what I kept saying to myself, when evening came and a sort of nausea for all this that I have just said seized me. I hesitated wondering whether I should not recount, instead, the use of my day of the 26th, which had been very happily and usefully stocked; or the next day that, by reaction, I contemplated devoting to work.… But I don’t like to cheat, and, going home: “It is the emptiness itself of a day of leisure that I must paint,” I said to myself, “of a lost day.” Yet I haven’t so many more to live. So I tried, before having done with the 27th, to get from myself at least a few sublime reflections.… Nothing came to me but asinine thoughts. Still it wasn’t late. I could give another hour to the revision of the translation of a novel by Jef Last. Then I went over again Ronsard’s poems that I had begun to memorize in the morning, testing again and again their soothing action. Then I turned the page of that day, which, in my Journal, would have remained blank, had it not been for the promise I had given to fill it.
1 It was on the initiative of Maxim Gorki that on the 27th of September, 1935, in every country in the world, the writers were called upon to describe their day, to note that some event of that day chosen in advance at random, to bring their contribution, under any form whatever, to the collective work to be called “A Day in the Entire World.”
5 ACQUASANTA
To my comrade Jef Last.
AND yet the few trips that I took alone were, perhaps, the most profitable for me. I think that a little cowardice enters into that need for a companion, for a pace-maker. Yet as age comes on, it seems to me that I wed a little his youth; it is through him that I feel; thanks to his astonishment I feel surprise once more; I partake of his delight and I know only too well that, when I am alone to enjoy it, the most charming landscapes in the world, the most smiling invitations to joy, are capable of plunging me into a sort of despair. But the memories of all that I enjoyed by proxy, as it were, are more easily detached from me, as though they only half belonged to me; while all that I had to undertake alone, pain or pleasure, remains deeply engraven in my heart.
It was alone that I left at the end of that summer for the Abruzzi. In what year? I no longer know; but to fix that point, I should only have to look up the date of the publication of the little book by Edmond Gosse, Critical Kit-Kats, which had just appeared, that he had sent me, and that was, at that blessed time, my only reading along with the Paradise Lost of Milton.
It was, I believe, around the first of September. I was hoping still to have ahead of me a whole season of sea baths in the Adriatic and was very much disappointed, on my arrival at San Benedetto del Tronto, to find all the hotels about to close. In the one in which I put up, I was the only guest, with a young student of uncertain nationality. We didn’t speak to each other; and I don’t know why, in the immense, deserted dining-room where I took only three meals, our places were set at the two ends of a huge oblong guest table. All during the meals, he and I, face to face, each one buried in his reading, remained without looking at each other. What was he reading that way? I was curious to know and, profiting by a momentary absence on his part, I leaped toward the book he had left on the table; it was Jerusalem Delivered. Hastily I regained my place. He came back, and we buried ourselves anew, he in the Tasso, I in the Milton.
Yes, the season had ended. The bath-houses no longer cluttered up the huge beach where I was wandering about, my heart full of expectation and anxiety, repeating to myself the lines of Laforgue:
Here comes autumn …
The casinos that are deserted
Put away their pianos …
Without any more bathers or tourists, the little city took back its normal aspect; the fishing smacks were leaving the port, two by two, with curious insignia, multi-colored figures recalling those of heraldry; one couple bore a besant of gold on a field of gules, another couple a sable cross on a field of sinople, others great parti-colored emblems; all that spread out in splendor over the cerulean carpet of the sea, evoking the times of the Crusades and a whole glorious past. I saw them fade in the distance, gain the open sea; I should have liked to see their return, I could not even imagine them bringing back any other fish than red mullets or dolphins, or some fabulous marine monsters. But I left the next day for Acquasanta, where I knew I was to find, if not sea baths, a pool of sulphur water for a cure that I had prescribed for myself, in which to store up a health reserve to get through the winter. The train went only as far as Ascoli; I then had to take the stage to Acquila. Acquasanta is along the first quarter of the routine that crosses the Abruzzi. I don’t recall this route clearly enough to be able to describe any of it.
At Acquasanta I learned the hotel had been closed for several days as the season was over. Not knowing where else to stay, I obtained permission from the keeper of the hotel to be lodged there; he consented to get ready for me one of the pleasantest rooms in it. He himself did not live in the hotel; so he entrusted me with the key, advising me to put on the night lock every evening. A spare key permitted his wife to bring me bread and coffee every morning. As for the midday and evening meals, he confessed it would be rather difficult to vary them; I would have to content myself with very little. But what did that matter! I have retained a delightful memory of the daily salads of sweet pimentos; not those orange pimentos, red or yellow, that I admired on the market squares, but little pimentos of a joyous, elementary green, fruits that I had never tasted, that, the first day, seemed horrible to me, but to which I became so well accustomed that to-day I deplore not being able to digest them.