Happy People
‘I’m afraid we’re going to get bad weather this evening,’ said the girl, and she pointed to a curtain of clouds on the horizon. She was skinny and angular, her hands moving jerkily, and she had her hair done up in a little ponytail. The terrace of the small restaurant looked out over the sea. To the right, beyond the screen of jasmine which climbed up to form a pergola, you could glimpse a little courtyard full of bric-à-brac, cases of empty bottles, a few broken chairs. To the left was a small ironwork gate, beneath which gleamed the little stairway carved into the sheer rock face. The waiter arrived with a tray of steaming shellfish. He was a little man with slicked-back hair and a shy manner. He put the tray down on the table and made a slight bow. On his right arm he carried a dirty napkin.
‘I like this country,’ said the girl to the man sitting opposite. ‘The people are simple and kind.’
The man didn’t answer; he unfolded his napkin, tucking it into the collar of his shirt, but then registered the girl’s disapproving look at once and rearranged it on his knees. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand the language. And then it’s too hot. And then I don’t like southern countries.’
The man was sixtyish, with a square face and thick eyebrows. But his mouth was pink and moist, with something soft about it.
The girl shrugged her shoulders. She seemed visibly annoyed, as if his confession contrasted somehow with her own candour. ‘You’re not being fair,’ she said. ‘They’ve paid for everything, the trip, the hotel. They couldn’t have treated you with more respect.’
He waved his hand in a gesture of indifference. ‘I didn’t come for their country, I came for the conference. They treat me with great respect and I show mine by being here, so we’re quits.’ He concentrated on cracking open his lobster, making it plain there was nothing else to say about the matter. A small gust of wind blew away the paper napkin covering the bread basket. The sea was getting choppy and was deep deep blue.
The girl seemed put out, but maybe it was just a show. When she finally spoke it was in a tone of faint resentment, but with a hint of reconciliation too. ‘You didn’t even tell me what you’ll be talking about, it’s as if you wanted to keep me in the dark about everything, which isn’t fair, I don’t think.’
He had finally managed to overcome the resistance of his lobster and was now dipping the meat in mayonnaise. His face brightened and in a single breath, like a schoolboy parroting a lesson, he said: ‘Structures and Distortions in Middle Latin and Vulgar Texts of the Pays d’Oc.’
The girl gulped, as if her food had gone down the wrong way, and she began to laugh. She laughed uncontrollably, covering her mouth with her napkin. ‘Oh dear,’ she hiccupped. ‘Oh dear!’
He started to laugh too, but stopped himself because he wasn’t sure whether it was best for him to join in her outburst of hilarity or not. ‘Explain,’ he asked, when she had calmed down.
‘Nothing,’ the girl said, between intermittent giggles. ‘It just occurred to me that you’re rather better suited to the vulgar than the Middle Latin, that’s all.’
He shook his head in fake pity, but you could see deep down he was flattered. ‘In any event we can begin the lesson now; so listen carefully.’ He held up a thumb and said: ‘Point number one: you have to study the minor authors, it’s the minor authors will make your career, all the greats have already been studied.’ He raised another finger. ‘Point number two: make the bibliography as long as you possibly can, taking care to disagree with scholars who are dead.’ He raised yet another finger. ‘Point number three: no fanciful methodologies, I know they’re in fashion now, but they’ll sink without a trace, stay with the straightforward and traditional.’ She was listening carefully, concentrating hard. Perhaps the sketch of a timid objection was forming on her face, because he felt the need to offer an example. ‘Think of that French specialist who came to talk about Racine and all Phaedra’s complexes,’ he said. ‘A normal person, would you say?’
‘What? Phaedra?’ asked the girl, as though thinking of something else.
‘The French specialist,’ he said patiently.
The girl didn’t answer.
‘Quite,’ he said. ‘These days critics are in the habit of unloading their own neuroses onto literary texts. I had the courage to say as much and you saw how outraged everybody was.’ He opened the menu and set about a careful choice of dessert. ‘Psychoanalysis was the invention of a madman,’ he concluded. ‘Everybody knows that, but you try saying it out loud.’
The girl looked absent-mindedly at the sea. She had a resigned expression and was almost pretty. ‘So what next?’ she asked, still speaking as though her mind were elsewhere.
‘I’ll tell you that later,’ said the man. ‘Right now I want to say something else. You know what’s positive about us, our winning card? Do you? It’s that we’re normal people, that’s what.’ He finally settled on a dessert and waved to the waiter. ‘And now I’ll tell you what’s next,’ he went on. ‘What’s next is, you apply for the place right now.’
‘But we’ll have your philologist friend against us,’ she objected.
‘Oh, him!’ exclaimed the man. ‘He’ll keep quiet, he will, or rather, he’ll be on our side, you’ll see.’ He left a pause that was full of mystery.
‘When he walks down the corridor with his pipe and hair blowing about, you’d think he was God and Father himself,’ she said. ‘He can’t bear me, he doesn’t even say hello.’
‘He’ll learn to say hello, sweetie.’
‘I told you not to call me sweetie, it brings me out in a rash.’
‘In any event he’ll learn to say hello,’ he interrupted. He smiled with a sly look and poured himself some wine. He was doing it on purpose to increase the mystery and wanted it to be obvious he was doing it on purpose. ‘I know all sorts of little things about him,’ he finally said, letting a glimmer of light into the darkness.
‘Tell me about them.’
‘Oh, little things,’ he muttered with affected casualness, ‘certain escapades, old friendships with people in this country when it was not exactly a paragon of democracy. If I was a novelist I could write a story about it.’
‘Oh, come on,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe it. He’s always in the front row when it comes to petitions and meetings, he’s left-wing.’
The man seemed to think over the adjective she’d used. ‘Left-handed, rather,’ he concluded.
The girl laughed, shaking her head, which made her ponytail bob from side to side. ‘In any event, we’ll need support from someone from another university,’ she said. ‘We can’t keep everything in the family.’
‘I’ve thought of that too.’
‘You think of everything, do you?’
‘In all modesty. .’
‘Who?’
‘No names.’
He smiled affably, took the girl’s hand and assumed a paternal manner. ‘Listen carefully, you have to analyse people’s motives, and that’s just what I do. Everybody runs a mile from him, have you ever asked yourself why?’